It was created by orientalist writers like Lovecraft as an "exotic" name and subsequently popularized in the Anglo literatisphere as a stock Arab character name. doesn't really exist in the Arabic-speaking world as an independent name, even if it's become common in western countries.
It comes from the word "abd" (عبد) in Arabic, which means servant or slave, combined with "ul" or "al" (ال), Arabic's only definitive article. "Al" can also express possession. It's often used as part of theonyms like Abdallah, meaning literally "servant of God," or like Kareem Abd-ul-Jabbar's name which means "servant of the mighty."
This post brought to you by a high person taking a week off work
Hitting me like a brick that Chengyu and Chengdu both use the character 成 and now I want to know why
in chengyu the cheng means "fixed; ready-made"
in chengdu the cheng means... there are some theories but it's probably the same sense of "established, made into"
"Three years to become a metropolis," would be a great title for a Chengdu history book.