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Anahad O'Connor
Author of Never Shower in a Thunder Storm. Guessing Gaelic, and is female.
Not in your data base. Ideas? Thanks
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He's a man, born in the US, and it looks like the name might be something to do with Sikh scripture - there is no info on it as an Irish name and it doesn't really fit with Irish orthography.Quoting some random person on an internet forum, for what it's worth:
'...his name has a couple of thousand years of tradition behind it...and, as I am sure your knowledge of Sanskrit will inform you, the Sikh Guru (Guru Granth Sahib) was renowned for his wisdom and wise utterances. These wise, enlightened astral utterances utterances are known as 'Anahad' in the Sikh scriptures .Loosely translated into English it is the voice of Guru Granth Sahib that you can only hear when you have attained an extremely high level of enlightenment and while in a certain difficult yogic position not achievable by lesser enlightened followers.From which...I can only conclude that Anahad O'Connor is either a truly enlightened Psychology major from Yale University or his parents were hippy-dippy smells-and-bells whacked out Irish immigrants having a laugh at the expense of their newborn and 'interestingly named' child.'
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anAhata is indeed a word in Sanskrit. It is formed as an- (privative) + A (directional particle, towards) + han (hit, kill, etc. cognate with the root of English fend) + past participle suffix. It means something "that is not hit", and applied to a sound, it refers to the eternal sound that was not created by beating a drum or the vocal chords or anything. Since in some of Indian cosmogony the eternal sound predates and pervades everything, it is a symbol of the divine power.The actual pronunciation in Punjabi (the language of most Sikhs in India) has varied, and anAhad is a common one. I do not know if Anahad O'Connor got the name from this Punjabi word or now.
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