While naam simran can in principle use any of God's names found in the Guru Granth Sahib, in actual practice a single word, Waheguru, "wonderful Lord," has become the standard formula of repetition among Sikhs, recited individually and congregationally, and as the refrain that closes the Ardas, functioning much as specific divine names function in comparable practices elsewhere.
Sikh teaching is nonetheless explicit in warning against treating repetition as a mechanical technique capable of producing spiritual results independent of sincerity, a caution the tradition directs specifically against practices, common in the wider Indian religious environment, of counting repetitions on a rosary (mala) as though the number achieved were what mattered. The Guru Granth Sahib repeatedly contrasts empty ritual repetition with remembrance that engages the whole person, holding that a single sincere invocation outweighs a vast number recited without attention.
Akhand Path, an unbroken, continuous reading of the entire Guru Granth Sahib, typically completed within roughly forty-eight hours by rotating readers, extends the same devotional logic to the scripture as a whole rather than a single repeated word: the practice is commonly undertaken to mark major life events, birth, marriage, death, the opening of a new gurdwara, or communal difficulty, treating sustained exposure to the Word as itself efficacious, consistent with the teaching that the Name is encountered through hearing and recitation rather than private contemplation alone.