Bet You Didn’t Know: Secrets Behind The Making of “Akeelah and the Bee”

Where did Akeelah come from?

Maybe it never occurred to you to ask where the name “Akeelah” came from but there is a pretty interesting story behind it. In the same Radio Free interview, director Doug Atchison explained how he discovered the name during a chance encounter.

“I was a the Pitfire Pizza Grill in North Hollywood, California…there was a girl behind the bar, and I was chatting with her. And I asked for her name, and she said, “My name’s Aqueelah.” And I went, “That’s her name! How do you spell it?” And she spelled it A-q-u-e-e-l-a-h.” So that’s what I wrote down, was “qu.” So I said, “Well what does it mean?” And she said it means, in Arabic, she said, “My mom told me it means princess.” So I called it “Aqueelah and the Bee” with a QU. And then everybody who read it, they were like, “Aqueelah and the Bee.” And I was like, “Okay, let me change it to a K.” I just liked the sound. Akeelah and the Bee. It sounded good. And I changed it to a K, and we showed it at ShoWest… people from the Hollywood for press were there, and one of them came up to me, and he was Arabic. And he said, “So do you know what Akeelah means in Arabic?” And I said, “Yeah, it means princess!” And he consulted with his wife, who’s also Arabic, and he goes, “That’s not what it means.” And I said, “What does it mean?” He said, “It means intelligence.”

That’s much more fitting than princess huh?