I was procrastinating the other day and intrigued by our conversation on the meaning of the name Tariq. When I first started looking I found definitions such as; the 'night visitor', or 'evening caller'. Secondly I started finding the definition 'morning star' a lot. This confused me and had me think of Venus so I kept looking. There are 6 other variants of the name; Tarek, Tareq, Tarick,Tarik, and Tarique. They should all be the same.Tariq Ibn Ziyad was the Islamic military leader that helped conquer Spain for the Moors. The rock of Gibraltar was named for him it means Mtn. of Tariq.
Anyway 'Al-Tariq' is the title of the 86th surah of the Quran. The most literal translation I could find was ' A night visitant which is a knocking star' It seems most people have taken their meanings from various transalations of the 86th surah instead of from the meaning of the word taraqa: knocking.
I liked the definition that converts knocking to pulsating. Etymology is a hobby of mine, I hope you found some interest in this post.
Check: wikipedia for Tariq or themiracle.blogspot.com/22007/08/pulsars.htm or itsislam.net/quran/surah.asp?id=86