The story of the name
Two letters, and a surah of consolation
Ta-Ha. We have not sent down the Qur'an upon you for you to be distressed (Surah Taha, 20:1–2). The twentieth surah opens with two Arabic letters and then turns immediately to console the Prophet ﷺ — a man praying his nights to exhaustion, told with tenderness that revelation came as gift, not burden. Whatever the letters mean, the sentence after them is one of the gentlest in the Book.
What the letters are — two readings
The majority of commentators place Ta-Ha among the muqatta'at. These are the disconnected letters that open twenty-nine surahs. Alif-Lam-Mim, Ya-Sin, Ha-Mim, Qaf, and Nun all belong to this same category. Their meaning is known to Allah alone. They stand at the Qur'an's thresholds. They remind the reader that the Book reaches beyond what anyone can fully grasp. Al-Tabari records this view alongside other early opinions. Ibn Kathir and al-Qurtubi preserve both readings too. Neither settles the question.
A separate strand of the tradition heard something more intimate. It reads the letters as an address. Some say they mean "O man." Others read them as a direct call to the Prophet ﷺ himself. Al-Qurtubi records this view too. From this second reading grew centuries of usage. Parents across the Muslim world have given Taha as a name of pure love for him ﷺ.
One thing needs to be stated plainly. Both readings — the muqatta'at view and the address view — come from tafsir and early exegetical reports. Neither comes from a hadith. The Prophet ﷺ never named himself Taha the way he named himself al-Mahi, al-Hashir, and al-Aqib. Those three names appear together in one sahih narration. No such narration exists for Taha.
Later scholars discussed the question in both directions. Ibn al-Qayyim declined to count it among his ﷺ authenticated names. Others accepted the usage as honor rather than as fact. This site presents both views and does not settle between them.
Correct — you're right. That closing line reads as if I'm quoting or paraphrasing something from the surah, and I'm not. It's my own summary presented in the emphatic register of a citation, which is exactly the kind of blurring your sourcing standards guard against.
Here's a version where every claim is traceable to the verses actually cited:
To carry this name
To carry this name is to remember the first thing Allah said to His Messenger ﷺ after those two letters: We have not sent down the Qur'an upon you to distress you (Surah Taha, 20:2). It is to serve without wearing yourself into the ground. Surah Taha goes on to tell Musa (AS), sent to confront Pharaoh: do not fear; indeed, you are the superior (Surah Taha, 20:68). Two men, two impossibly hard assignments — and in the same surah, the same reassurance from Allah before the work began.