The

Akan people The Akan () people live primarily in present-day Ghana and Ivory Coast in West Africa. The Akan language (also known as ''Twi/Fante'') are a group of dialects within the Central Tano branch of the Potou–Tano subfamily of the Niger–Con ...

Ghana Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and Tog ...

frequently name their children after the day of the week they were born and the order in which they were born. These "day names" have further meanings concerning the soul and character of the person. Middle names have considerably more variety and can refer to their birth order, twin status, or an ancestor's middle name. This naming tradition is shared throughout

West Africa West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali ...

and the

African diaspora The African diaspora is the worldwide collection of communities descended from native Africans or people from Africa, predominantly in the Americas. The term most commonly refers to the descendants of the West and Central Africans who were ...

. During the 18th–19th centuries, enslaved people in the Caribbean from the region that is modern-day Ghana were referred to as Coromantees. Many of the leaders of enslaved people's rebellions had "day names" including Cuffy,

Cuffee Cuffee, Cuffey, or Coffey is a first name and surname recorded in African-American culture, believed to be derived from the Akan language name Kofi, meaning "born on a Friday". This was noted as one of the most common male names of West African ...

or Kofi,

Cudjoe Cudjoe, Codjoe or Captain Cudjoe (c. 1660s – 1764),Michael Sivapragasam''After the Treaties: A Social, Economic and Demographic History of Maroon Society in Jamaica, 1739–1842'' PhD Dissertation, African-Caribbean Institute of Jamaica library ...

or Kojo,

Quao Quao (d. c. 1750s) was one of the leaders of the Windward Maroons, who fought the British colonial forces of Jamaica to a standstill during the First Maroon War of the 1730s. The name Quao is probably a variation of Yaw, which is the Twi Akan ...

or Quaw, and Quamina or Kwame/Kwamina. Most

Ghanaians The Ghanaian people are a nation originating in the Ghanaian Gold Coast. Ghanaians predominantly inhabit the Republic of Ghana and are the predominant cultural group and residents of Ghana, numbering 30 million people as of 2020, making up 85 ...

have at least one name from this system, even if they also have an English or Christian name. Notable figures with day names include Ghana's first president

Kwame Nkrumah Kwame Nkrumah (born 21 September 190927 April 1972) was a Ghanaian politician, political theorist, and revolutionary. He was the first Prime Minister and President of Ghana, having led the Gold Coast to independence from Britain in 1957. An ...

and former

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoni ...

Secretary-General Secretary is a title often used in organizations to indicate a person having a certain amount of authority, power, or importance in the organization. Secretaries announce important events and communicate to the organization. The term is derived ...

Kofi Annan Kofi Atta Annan (; 8 April 193818 August 2018) was a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh secretary-general of the United Nations from 1997 to 2006. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize. He was the founde ...

. In the official orthography of the

Twi Twi () is a dialect of the Akan language spoken in southern and central Ghana by several million people, mainly of the Akan people, the largest of the seventeen major ethnic groups in Ghana. Twi has about 17-18 million speakers in total, includ ...

language, the Ashanti versions of these names as spoken in

Kumasi Kumasi (historically spelled Comassie or Coomassie, usually spelled Kumase in Twi) is a city in the Ashanti Region, and is among the largest metropolitan areas in Ghana. Kumasi is located in a rain forest region near Lake Bosomtwe, and is t ...

are as follows. The diacritics on á a̍ à represent high, mid, and low tone (tone does not need to be marked on every vowel), while the diacritic on a̩ is used for vowel harmony and can be ignored. (Diacritics are frequently dropped in any case.) Variants of the names are used in other languages, or may represent different

transliteration Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus ''trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → , Cyrillic → , Greek → the digraph , Armenian → or L ...

schemes. The variants mostly consist of different

affix In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ...

es (in Ashanti, ''kwa-'' or ''ko-'' for men and ''a-'' plus ''-a'' or ''-wa'' for women). For example, among the Fante, the prefixes are ''kwe-'', ''kwa'' or ''ko'' for men and ''e-'', ''a''respectively. Akan ''d̩wo'' or ''jo''(Fante) is pronounced something like English ''Joe'', but there do appear to be two sets of names for those born on Monday.

Day names

Twin names

There are also special names for elder and younger twins. The second twin to be born is considered the elder as they were mature enough to help their sibling out first. (The definition above must be a regional concept because in Cape Coast, heart of Fanti land, the elder twin is the one who comes out first, the second twin is considered the younger one. Therefore, The younger twin would be Kakra; the older twin would be Panyin.) The word Panyin means older/elder. Kakra is short for Kakraba which means little/younger one. The definition/description below for the meaning of younger and an elder are backwards or vice versa.

Birth-order names

There are also names based on the order of birth, the order born after twins, and the order born after remarriage.

Special delivery

Children are also given names when delivered under special circumstances.

Family names

Ashanti people The Asante, also known as Ashanti () are part of the Akan ethnic group and are native to the Ashanti Region of modern-day Ghana. Asantes are the last group to emerge out of the various Akan civilisations. Twi is spoken by over nine million Asa ...

given-names are concluded with a

family name In some cultures, a surname, family name, or last name is the portion of one's personal name that indicates one's family, tribe or community. Practices vary by culture. The family name may be placed at either the start of a person's full name, ...

(

surname In some cultures, a surname, family name, or last name is the portion of one's personal name that indicates one's family, tribe or community. Practices vary by culture. The family name may be placed at either the start of a person's full name ...

) preceded by a

given name A given name (also known as a forename or first name) is the part of a personal name quoted in that identifies a person, potentially with a middle name as well, and differentiates that person from the other members of a group (typically a ...

. The family name (surname) are always given after close relatives and sometimes friends. Since Ashanti names are always given by the men, if a couple receives a son as their first born-baby then the son is named after the father of the husband and if the baby is a girl then she will be named after the mother of the husband. As a result, if the man is called ''Osei Kofi'' and his wife gives birth to a girl as their first born, the girl may be called ''Yaa Dufie'' even if she was not born on Friday. The reason is that the mother of the husband (''Osei Kofi'') is called ''Yaa Dufie''. The Ashanti people usually give these names so that the names of close relatives be maintained in the families to show the love for their families. In the olden days of Ashanti it was a disgrace if an Ashanti man was not able to name any child after his father and/or mother because that was the pride of every Ashanti household. Most of the ethnic-Ashanti family name (surname) given to boys could also be given to girls just by adding the letters "aa". Some Ashanti family names (surnames) can be given to both boys and girls without changing or adding anything. However, there are other ethnic-Ashanti family name (surnames) that are exclusively male names, while others are exclusively female names.

References

Additional references

* J. E. Redden and N. Owusu (1963, 1995). ''Twi Basic Course''. Foreign Service Institute (Hippocrene reprint). * Florence Abena Dolphyne (1996). ''A Comprehensive Course in Twi (Asante) for the Non-Twi Learner''. Accra: Ghana Universities Press.
Akan Teleteaching course

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