What's in a name? Ghanian naming traditions

I have been urged to write a short article on the Ghanaian way of naming children, because it might be of interest to everyone.

The naming process is based on what day of the week one is born and that determines the first name, and for some families, especially the Akan tribe, which is the largest, this process is taken a step further by adding other names to reflect the numerical size of the family.

However contact with the early missionaries, most of whom were English, brought about the adoption of typically English names for most school going children and the missionaries were known to re-christen the hapless school children with English names when their traditional names proved either too difficult to pronounce or there just happened to be an English name which was a near match.

The various first names that go with the days of the week are as follows:

The process for the adoption of other names is just as simple as the above, and the number of offspring in a family determines this. The children are thus named in the following order:

There is no better way of demonstrating this system other than to use the names of two famous Ghanaians as examples. The first is the great Dr Kwame Nkrumah who led Ghana into independence. His first name suggests that he was born on a Saturday and the second name identifies him as a ninth child. The second example is Kofi Annan, the current UN Secretary General. His first name, looking at the above table, also suggests that he was born on a Friday and the second name again shows that he is a fourth child.

Incidentally these names, especially the other names have ended up being adopted as family names, and it is not surprising to see a man like Kofi Annan’s wife being called Mrs Annan, and their childred having the name "Annan" as their family names, even though the couple might have a total of two children.

Joseph Kweku Arthur

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