Akan "Soul Names" as Archives of Histories and Knowledge PDF

Akan “Soul Names” as Archives of Histories and Knowledge: Some Preliminary Thoughts Kwasi Konadu INTRODUCTION Akan “soul names” possess a ubiquity as kente cloth in global market- places, and yet they have been rarely studied as ar...

Akan “Soul Names” as Archives of Histories and Knowledge: Some Preliminary Thoughts Kwasi Konadu INTRODUCTION Akan “soul names” possess a ubiquity as kente cloth in global market- places, and yet they have been rarely studied as archives of histories and knowledge. These patterned fe/male names for each day of the week have naturally caught the attention of linguists, who approach them from the perspectives of syntax, semiotics, and as recourse from which to draw dehistoricized “ethno-linguistic” data.1 Less visible in the literature are 1 See, for instance, Kofi Agyekum, “The Sociolinguistic of Akan Personal Names,” Nordic Journal of African Studies 15, no. 2 (2006): 206–35; Samuel Gyasi Obeng, African Anthroponymy: An Ethnopragmatic and Morphophonological Study of Personal Names in Akan and Some African Societies (München: Lincom Europa, 2001); idem, “From Morphophonology to Sociolinguistics: The Case of Akan Hypocoristic Day-Names,” Multilingua 16, no. 1 (1997): 39–56. K. Konadu (*) Africana & Latin American Studies, Colgate University, Hamilton, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 119 Switzerland AG 2023 ̌ O. Oyewùmí, H. Girma (eds.), Naming Africans, Gender and Cultural Studies in Africa and the Diaspora, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13475-3_7 120 K. KONADU studies from historical linguists and virtually absent are historians who have probed them as (re)sources for historical reconstruction. This chap- ter argues Akan “soul names” (akradin) function as indices of historic and cultural content and, viewed from this perspective, archives of indigenous knowledge. Our guide in making this case comes from one of the earliest documented “soul names” of an African woman recorded as Adua (Adwoa). In what follows, I advance three related views: histories of Akan (and African) peoples can be decoded and made more intelligible accord- ing their own logic by paying attention to names as archives of knowledge; this knowledge can offer new perspectives on pre-nineteenth-century colonial and Christian encounters, and how African peoples engaged them over time; and, finally, a historicized study of names provides an additional method for reconstituting cultural forms, norms, and meanings through- out their elongated histories. “[THEY] CALL THEMSELVES BY HEATHEN NAMES” In September 1572, a Portuguese official stationed at the São Jorge da Mina fortress on the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana) wrote, I rejoice that they [the Catholic priests] have put into effect the saying of mass at a certain hour, and have taught the blacks the stations of the cross; and I believe that eventually there will be a roll-call, as is done in many parts, including Spain, which seems to me very necessary because the blacks are an indolent and careless people; and also so that they can hear their Christian names repeated, because I understand that all the other [converts] after leaving the company of Christians and returning to their village, call them- selves by heathen names, [for instance,] the man named Joanne being known as Tabo and the woman [named] Maria as Adua [Adwoa].2 There are several stories packed into this observation, the least impor- tant of which concern Europe or Portugal. That the converted “blacks” should “hear their Christian names repeated” echoes less indoctrination or even Christian proselytization. Proselytization was woven into a colonial project, where fortified coastal enclaves settled by Portuguese nationals were governed by political allegiance to Portugal and its laws and customs. This exercise of power, however tenuous and partial, explains why 2 António Brásio, ed., Monumenta Missionaria Africana (Lisbon: Agência Geral do Ultramar, 1952-88), 3: 90–91. Hereafter, “MMA.”  AKAN “SOUL NAMES” AS ARCHIVES OF HISTORIES AND KNOWLEDGE… 121 Portuguese overseas personnel and officials in Lisbon claimed the São Jorge da Mina and its adjoining lands as “our district” and why the anony- mous official distinguished the “company of Christians” from “their village.”3 That village was Adena, situated on the west bank of the Benya lagoon. The Portuguese called it “the village of two parts,” since Adena and the São Jorge da Mina fortress stood on land claimed by the local poli- ties of Fetu and the Eguafoɔ. According to oral histories, Adena was the outgrowth of an earlier village named Anomansa or Anomee founded by a hunter named Kwa Amankwa before the Portuguese arrived in 1471. For the Portuguese, then, a return “to their village” meant defecting from Christendom and a relapse into its demonic inverse, including “heathen names.” Christian conversion was situational and incomplete, but the real or imagined ideological control the anonymous official and the Catholic priests saw as “very necessary,” in any colonial encounter, was thwarted when Adwoa spoke or heard her name. Indeed, her name is a rare speci- men among the sixteenth-century records for Akan interaction with the Portuguese empire, when Portugal enjoyed something of a trade monop- oly vis-à-vis their European adversaries on the Gold Coast. The name Adwoa, more importantly, has its own story. Tabo seems to be Tabi, a personal or praise name corresponding to Agyei.4 Though the meaning of Tabo as a personal name is less clear, there is no doubt about the name Adwoa. Adwoa remains the “soul name” (kradin) given to an Akan female child born on Monday (Dwoada). Rarely is this kradin tampered with or altered. Though we lack every detail of this Adwoa’s life except her soul name, we know she would have undergone a naming or “out-dooring” ceremony (abadinto) on a week after the day of birth. Soul names and the process of naming were requisite parts of per- sonhood, and guides for achieving a person’s mission (hyɛbea) in the tem- poral world. Soul names reflect an individual’s human purpose in life; said another way, they index the particular “soul” revealed on a day, assigned to a specific person. Adwoa’s abadinto would have taken place at her father’s house, after waiting a calendar week (nnawɔtwe) to ensure she came to stay on earth (Asase Yaa) and would not prematurely return to the ancestor’s abode (asamandoɔ) to her spiritual mother. Until the Monday after her birth, Adwoa the infant would have been regarded as a stranger 3 See, for instance, John W. Blake, Europeans in West Africa, 1450–1560 (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1941), 96, 133. 4 A. A. Opoku, Obi Kyerɛ (Tema: Ghana Publishing Corp., 1973), 77. 122 K. KONADU (ɔhɔho) and thus greeted, woaba a tena aseɛ (“now that you have come, sit down [and stay]”), to wish her a long life (nkwa soɔ). Before the scheduled day of the abadinto ceremony, items such as palm wine or an alcoholic drink (nsa), cups (nkuruwa), water (nsuo), mat (kɛtɛ), calabash (koraa), and broom (ɔprae) were gathered for the girl child. Boys would have a cutlass (nkrante). Early in the morning of the scheduled day, two elders of high character from the father’s family would have been sent to retrieve Adwoa and her mother from the mother’s house. One of the elders—a woman for a girl child, and a man for a male child—is chosen to perform the ceremony. Adwoa’s mother would then bathe the infant and both would dress in white cloth and stay indoors until the ceremony begins. Certain sacred beads (e.g., bɔdɔm, ahenewa, and abobɔe) are placed on the child, and marks made with white clay (hyire) and specific to this ceremony are drawn on the child and mother. Just before daybreak (anɔpa-hema), close relatives and friends of the mother help in the preparation, as the ceremony starts with an opening libation (mpaeɛ) poured by an elder who announces the occasion and its purpose. The family (abusua) of Adwoa’s mother would have provided the drink used for the opening libation, which is poured at every doorstep and the main entrance to the house. Adwoa would have belonged to one of eight matrilineal clans, each associated with a sacred animal (akraboa) and a basic character—Ɛyoko (falcon; patience), Asona (raven; wisdom), Aseneɛ (bat; diplomacy), Aduana (dog; skill), Ɛkoɔna (buffalo; uprightness), Asakyiri (vulture; cleanliness), Agona (par- rot; eloquence), and Beretuo (leopard; aggressiveness).5 The father’s family provides the drink for the second libation. After this libation, Adwoa would have been taken out of the house, stripped naked, and then placed on a prepared area of the ground or on a comfortable cushion. Early that morn- ing (anɔpa), when all guests have arrived, a female or male elder of the father takes the child to her or his lap and both the water and the alcoholic beverage are poured into separate cups. Naming the child is the responsibility of the father’s family. It is quite likely Adwoa’s name would have been provided by her father (agya) and the officiating female elder would have spoken something to this effect: Yɛbɛfrɛ wo Adwoa ne asekyerɛ din yɛ yɛwoo wo Ɛdwoada 5 The Akan mmusua (matrilineal clans) are associated with an equivalent group of stars the Akan identify as the original ancestress (aberewa, “the old woman”) and her six or seven children. That constellation is called Aberewa ne ne mma (“the old woman and her children”).  AKAN “SOUL NAMES” AS ARCHIVES OF HISTORIES AND KNOWLEDGE… 123 (We will call you Adwoa and this name means your [feminine] soul decided to come to this earth on a Monday) Ɛfiri nne rekɔ yɛbɛfrɛ wo Adwoa (agyadin) (From today onward, we will call you Adwoa [and at least her patrilineal clan/family name—agyadin]). The name Adwoa is even more revealing. On its own, and without any other details in the documentary record, we know Adwoa was born on one of six Mondays on the Akan calendar consisting of 378 days, orga- nized into nine cycles of 42 days. This cycle or adaduanan was sub-divided into six weeks of seven days each. The root of Adwoa’s name—dwo—is shared by the day on which she was born—dwoada—and this root term also linked her to an ɔbosom (spiritual force) which the Akan conceptual- ized as a soul or emissary of their Creator (called Onyankopɔn, among other praise names).6 These abosom (sg. ɔbosom, “that which serves an unlimited purpose”) were deeply integral to notions of personhood and culture. Those abosom located at the foundation of the calendar and the naming system were recorded by lexicographer J.G. Christaller in the nineteenth century: “The seven days of the week are named after seven personal beings or Genii called Ayisi [Awusi], Adwo, Bena, Wuku [Aku], Yaw [Awo], Afi, Amen.”7 Widely held is the idea that these abosom shape the persona and basic conduct of each soul name bearer. Those born on the same day were thought to share similar qualities and personal challenges. The Sunday-born is a leader society looks upon for guid- ance and leadership and s/he is appropriately known as obue-akwan, “clearer of the way.” However, they are very inquisitive and tend to be easily pulled into a thing of interest. The Monday-born, such as Adwoa, is a calm person (okoto), peacemaker (adwo), protector, and supplicant, but have such a con- fidence that they tend to be unreceptive to advice external to their own. The 6 The Akan conceived Creator is realized as part and parcel of an unfolding process of creation and this may explain why the Akan acknowledge first but almost never pour libation to their Creator. As manifestations of the Creator, the abosom reside in specific locales and permeate the ocean (εpo kεseε), rivers (asu), lakes (atare), streams (asuwa), mountains (mmepɔw), forests (akwae), trees and plants (nnua), and microorganisms and animals (mmoa) that exist in the temporal domain of Asase Yaa (“earth”). These natural features are part of creation and, by extension, Onyankopɔn—one of several “praise names” for the Akan Creator. 7 J. G. Christaller, Dictionary of the Asante and Fante Language Called Tshi (Basel: Basel Evangelical Missionary Society, 1933), 599. 124 K. KONADU Tuesday-born, like the Monday-born, has some arrogance and is known as ɔbarima, “manly” or “courageous”; but once tempered, they tend to be nurturing and achieve a balance between strength and compassion (ogyam). The Wednesday-born is a champion (ntoni, atobi) of the cause of others and thus a hero, but s/he can be mean-spirited (obrisii, “dark hearted”) and tenacious. The Thursday-born is courageous and aggressive in a warlike manner (preko), and thus tend to be very guarded, judgmental, and appear to be ungrateful (aye-anya-nya, “one who suffers from ingratitude”). The Friday-born is an adventurer (ntefo-a-ɔkyin, “stubborn one born to be a wan- derer”) and indecisive and thus take time to settle, but are highly motivated and competent. Lastly, the Saturday-born tends to be talented (atoapem), wise, and problem-solvers, but also very sensational (nya-beasa-wo, “the sen- sationalist”) and often have a very healthy appetite.8 Through the optic of her kradin, the spiritual and temporal persona of our guide Adwoa is revealed against the backdrop of the ɔbosom with which she was associated (dwo) and the praise name (okoto) which func- tioned as shorthand for her temperament (see Table 1). “The [Akan] cel- ebrate every week the day on which they are born,” observed eighteenth-century Danish clergyman Christian Oldendorp, “for instance Monday. On that day in the morning before washing themselves, they grind up [a plant] … in water and take a mouthful of the water three times and every time they spit out the water they pray to Jankombum Table 1 Soul Names, Guiding Forces (abosom), and Praise Names Abosom ɛda (day) ɔbarima-din (male) ɔbaa-din Mmmrane (“praise (female) names”) Awusi Kwasiada Kwasi Akosua Bodua (protector, leader) Adwo Dwoada Kwadwo Adwoa Okoto (calm, humble) Bena Benada Kwabena Abena Ogyam (good, humane) Aku Wukuada Kwaku Akua Ntonni (advocate, hero) Awo Yawoada Yaw (formerly Kwaw) Yaa Pereko (firm, fearless) Afi Fiada Kofi (formerly Kwafi) Afia Okyin (itinerant, adventurer) Amen Memeneda Kwame Amma Atoapem (ancient, heroic) 8 On some of these personal qualities, see Kwame Gyekye, An Essay on African Philosophical Thought: The Akan Conceptual Scheme (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995), 172.  AKAN “SOUL NAMES” AS ARCHIVES OF HISTORIES AND KNOWLEDGE… 125 [Onyankopɔn].”9 For Adwoa, the Monday-born female with a cool and peaceful character but with episodes of ingratitude, this morning ritual affirming her connection to her Creator and the ɔbosom anchored in her soul (name) and day of birth would have been no different. Adwoa would have been taught this and other ritual practices, after her introduction to the world, beginning with her naming ritual. After Adwoa received her kradin, the female elder would have then dipped her forefinger into an alcoholic beverage-filled cup or used a leaf and afterward placed droplets on Adwoa’s tongue and uttered three times, sɛ yɛka se nsa a ka se nsa (“when we say that it is intoxicating drink [symbolic of untruth], say that it is intoxicating drink”). The elder does the same with the water: sɛ yɛka se nsuo a ka se nsuo (“when we say that it is water [symbolic of truth], say that it is water”).10 These tasting rituals advise Adwoa the infant to seek and tell the truth and to distinguish it from falsehood as she strives to live a righteous and ethical life (abrabɔ). If there are other names after the kradin, those names usually derive from consultations with spiritualist-healers (ɔkɔmfoɔ; ɔbosomfoɔ), an elder or ancestor of the father’s family of high character (suban pa), or particular circumstances surrounding the child’s birth. Some birth circumstantial names include Anto (“did not meet”) and Yɛmpɛwo (“we don’t want you”), for a parent, usually father, passed before child’s birth; Bɛkoeɛ 9 Christian G.A. Oldendorp, Historie der caribischen Inseln Sanct Thomas, Sanct Crux und Sanct Jan, insbesondere der dasigen Neger und der Mission der evangelischen Brüder-Unität Herrnhut, Erster Teil, eds. Gudrun Meier, Stephan Palmié, Peter Stein, and Horst Ulbricht (Berlin: Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde Dresden, 2000), 386. 10 Kofi Agyekum, professor of linguistics at the University of Ghana (Legon), recounts below (in English translation) the adinto ceremony of his daughter held in June 1985 in Kumase. The form and text is strikingly similar to the “general” form outlined above for Adwoa. Professor Agyekum’s daughter, Afua Ataa Boakyewaa Agyekum, was named after his mother, a female twin born on Friday. The elder officiant of the adinto ceremony said the following: “Baby, you are welcome to this world. Have a longer stay, just do not come and exhibit yourself and return. Your mothers and fathers have assembled here today to give you a name. The name we are giving to you is Afua Ataa Boakyewaa Agyekum. You are named Afua because that is the day your soul decided to enter into this world. We are naming you after your grandmother Afua Ataa. Your grandparent is Ataa because she was born a twin. Her real name is Boakyewaa, the feminine form of Boakye. Remember that your grand- mother is a twin and therefore a deity and sacred figure that must be kept hallowed. In view of this, come and put up a good moral behavior. Again we are attaching your father’s name Agyekum to your name. Follow the footsteps of your father and come and study hard. When we say water, let it be water, when we say drink let it be drink” (Agyekum, “Sociolinguistics,” 217). 126 K. KONADU (“came to fight” [born during tragedy/war]); Humuu (born at time of harvest festival); Dwira (born at time of new year yam harvest festival of purification); Sika (born during discovery of gold); Afiriyie/Baayie/Abayie (born during time of abundance, wealth and peace); Brɛnya (born when mother had been declared barren); and Onyina (born underneath a silk cotton tree). If Adwoa was born in a sequence of children, she would have had an added name signaling her birth order: Piesie (first born; lit. “erupt from an anthill”); Manu, Mεnsa and Mansa (female), Anane/Annan, (A) num, Nsia, Nson, Nwɔtwe, Nkroma, Badu/Beduwaa, Duku, Adunu, and Adusa. If Adwoa was a twin, she and other would be called Ata (male) or Ataa (female). A child following twins is called Tawia, then comes Nyankomago, Atuakɔsεn, Abobakorowa, and Damusaa.11 In line with the “soul name,” Adwoa was guaranteed a second, family name (called agyadin since it derives from the father’s patrilineal clan) if no peculiar circumstances or deceased person from whom to her name exists. Such family names are clan names based on twelve patrilineal clans (ntorɔ/ntɔn))—rather than the complimentary eight matrilineal clans (mmusua; sg. abusua) to which all Akan children belong. These names are given by the father in consultation with his parents or wife, and, in earlier times, with family or community spiritualists. Each of the twelve ntorɔ or ntɔn has a “soul day” (kra da), or a specific, and usually overlapping, day on which certain rituals associated with the ntorɔ/ntɔn are performed. Thus, in Table 2, each of the following patrilineal clans represented has their own day of observance (kra da) where members ritually cleanse their soul typically near a body of water, exchange greetings with specific responses (nnyesoɔ) among those sharing the same ntorɔ/ntɔn, uphold a set of taboos or avoidances (nkyiwadeε), respect a sacred animal (akraboa; 11 Agyekum, “Sociolinguistics,” 217–27. Table 2 Akan Ntorɔ/Ntɔn (patrilineal clans) Ntorɔ/ntɔn Kra da Nnyesoɔ Akyiwadeɛ Akrammoa Suban Agyadin Bosommuru (Muru river Tuesdays Yaa aburu Cattle, dog, Python, Respectable, ? in Akyem or Adanse; a ɔkwakuo (Mona mouse distinguished family ɔbosom) monkey), asokwa (a bird), corn, palm wine, Tuesday dancing Bosompra (Pra river that Wednesdays Yaa aku/ White fowl, black Crocodile Tough, Agyeman, Asare, Amoako, flows through Asante to ɛsɔn (and snail, antelope, strong, firm Ofori, Boaten, Kwaakye, the coast; a family and a Yaa water yam, Adu, Boakye, Oti, Opoku, state ɔbosom) anyaado) ɔkwakuo, tortoise, Amankwa, Boahene, leopard, carcass Safoa, Akyeampɔn, ado Bosomtwe (sacred lake Sundays Yaa awisi ɔkwakuo, snail, wild Leopard Humane, Ofosu, Gyadu, Kwatia, in Asante; a family Yaa dog, tortoise, kind, Boafo, Boate, Atakora, ɔbosom) ahenewa antelope empathetic Ɔsafo, Anteadu, Agyei, (and Yaa Akyaw, Aniapam, Ɔkyem amu) Bosomafram (Afram Saturdays Yaa amen Palm wine, goat, Ɔkwakuo Liberal, kind, Amponsa, Anokye, Peasa, river) (and Yaa cattle, antelope, empathetic Awua, Afram, dame, anyaado) crocodile Afrane, Ɔtwe, Akwaa Bosomnkεteaa (river or Tuesdays Yaa Dog, dove, tortoise, Hippo- Proud, Dakwa, Boadu, Bonsu, sea; it is combined with anyaado potamus audacious Apea, Ayim, Kusi, Bosompo (sea) Yaa opeafo Poakwa, Osei (Ɔsɛe), ntorɔ/ntɔn; it is a family Otutu, Ayimadu, Okurofa bosom) AKAN “SOUL NAMES” AS ARCHIVES OF HISTORIES AND KNOWLEDGE… (continued) 127  128 Table 2 (continued) Ntorɔ/ntɔn Kra da Nnyesoɔ Akyiwadeɛ Akrammoa Suban Agyadin K. KONADU Bosomkrɛtea Thursdays ? Ape, carcass, Python Chivalrous ? kyɛnkyɛn (bark cloth) Bosomdwerɛbe (a cave; a Sundays Yaa Spotted animals, Leopard Eccentric, Sakyi, Ampɔnsa, Otieku, family ɔbosom) ahenewa palm wine, tortoise, jittery Aboagye, Sɛkyerɛ, Ataara, snail Antwi, Akuamoa Bosomafi (earth ntorɔ/ Fridays (or Yaa afi (and Water yam, black Goat Chaste ? ntɔn; a family ɔbosom) Tuesdays) Yaa ɔpeo or snail, monitor opeafo) lizard, boar Bosomayensu (Ayensu Fridays ? White hen, Wild hog Truculent ? river; a family ɔbosom) antelope, black snail or boar Bosomsika (“gold/ Fridays ? Mixture of food Monitor Fastidious ? currency”) lizard Bosomakɔm (associated Tuesdays (or ? Palm wine, spotted Dog Fanatic Adu, Oben, ado, Anim, with spiritual [ɔkɔm] Fridays) animals Akɔmaa, Asuman, mediumship) Ankomahene Bosomkɔnsi (associated Tuesdays ? Palm wine; Tuesday Tortoise Virtuoso ? with ɔkɔmfoɔ’s work) dancing a Krete is supposedly an ɔbosom venerated in Aburi, the Akuapem region of eastern Ghana. See A. C. Denteh, “Ntorɔ and Ntɔn,” Research Review 3, no. 3 (1967): 92 fn. 5, 96; Pescheux, Royaume Asante, 296; Opoku, Obi Kyerɛ, 23  AKAN “SOUL NAMES” AS ARCHIVES OF HISTORIES AND KNOWLEDGE… 129 pl. akrammoa) which members taboo, share basic character (suban), and assume one of several patrilineal clan names (agyadin).12 Those clustered within the same patrilineal clan—marked by one of the ntorɔ/ntɔn above (see Table 2)—would possess one of the several agyadin or paternally derived family names, as the name which follows their kradin. All the ritual practices and observances, including the agyadin, would have been bequeathed by the father. We have no way of knowing the agyadin or ntorɔ/ntɔn of Adwoa, but if we speculate further, Adwoa might have been associated with the Bosomnkɛteaa/Bosompo ntorɔ for it is linked to the ocean where Adwoa and presumably her family lived and where she would have purified her soul (kra) on all six Tuesday on the adaduanan calendar system. The veracity of this association between Adwoa and an ntorɔ/ntɔn is not what is important here; rather, this exercise in probability allows us to role-play what would have happened during Adowa’s naming ceremony and thus anchoring her in family and community life. In this world of probability, Adowa would have responded to others sharing the same Bosomnkɛteaa/Bosompo ntorɔ with “Yaa anyaado or opeafo” and learn to bathe her soul on Tuesdays by the ocean. She would have learned to avoid dogs, doves, and tortoises on Tuesdays, but regard the Hippopotamus, appropriately called a “sea horse,” as sacred and not to be harmed or killed. This Adwoa would have been socialized to be proud and audacious—the basic character of Bosomnkɛteaa/Bosompo ntorɔ—and would have been given an agyadin such as Dakwa, Boadu, Bonsu, Kusi, Poakwa, Otutu, Ayimadu, or Okurofa. Let us call her, for the sake of argu- mentation, Adwoa Bonsu. Bonsu, meaning “whale” or another sea animal spouting water, seems appropriate in this context. 12 In addition to interviews and conversations with knowledgeable Akan peoples over the years, I have also consulted the following with regard to the patrilineal lines in the incom- plete Table 1: Agyekum, “Sociolinguistic,” 218; T. C. McCaskie, State and Society in Pre- colonial Asante (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 170–72; Gerald Pescheux, Le Royaume Asante (Ghana): Parenté, Pouvoir, Histoire, XVIIe-XXe siècles (Paris: Karthala Editions, 2003), 293–98; A. Abu Boahen, E. Akyeampong, N. Lawler, T.C. McCaskie, and Ivor Wilks, “The History of Ashanti Kings and the Whole Country Itself” and Other Writing by Otumfuo Nana Agyeman Prempeh I (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); A. A. Opoku, Obi Kyerɛ (Tema: Ghana Publishing Co., 1973), 20–23, 26–30; B. S. Akuffo, Tete Akorae (Accra: Bureau of Ghana Languages, 1970), 71–74; E. R. Addow, Edin ne Mmrane (Accra: Bureau of Ghana Languages, 1969), 6; Thomas Yao Kani, Akanfoɔ Amammerɛ (Accra: Bureau of Ghana Languages, 1962), 54–62; Kofi A. Busia, The Position of the Chief in the Modern Political System of Ashanti (New York: Oxford University Press, 1951); Christaller, Dictionary. 130 K. KONADU After the naming of Adwoa Bonsu, a mat would have been placed on the floor or ground. The child then elevated three times, placed on the mat naked and with a broom in her hand, and afterwards covered with a calabash. After a few seconds, the calabash was removed. This process symbolized the ethic of hard work, preserving a household and family, and working with her future husband. If it were a boy, a cutlass was placed in his hand; the cutlass symbolizes a similar work ethic, providing for and protecting his family, and working with his future wife. Adwoa Bonsu would then have been presented to her community, hence, the common translation of the naming ceremony as “out-dooring,” since this would have been the first time she was taken out of the house. A final libation was poured to consecrate the ceremony, and blessings for the child and her family were articulated along with requests for the child to be an obedient, truthful, and righteous member of the community. Thereafter, Adwoa would be addressed by their name and her ears would receive what family and community members expect of her. Songs of praise would have also been sung to the child. Those in audience bearing gifts such as money (sika) or clothing (ntadeɛ) offered them to the family of the newborn, while the father presented gifts to the mother and child. General feasting with singing and dancing then followed, providing festive closure to the abadinto ceremony and the welcoming of Adwoa Bonsu to her new world. “THEY PAY REGARD TO THE DAY OF BIRTH”: FORMS AND MEANINGS IN A NAMING CULTURE Somewhere between the Georgian calendar years of 1616 and 1620, Samuel Brun, a German who worked in the Dutch West India Company on the Gold Coast, observed, “As soon as a mother give birth to a child, the father [would] call all his neighbors together; they lay the child on the leaf of a tree (for they have no cushions) and drink over the child’s body, so that the wine drips on it. As soon as it begins to scream, they give a name according to the scream the child lets forth, such as Corankin [Korankye], Quaku [Kwaku], Apeidaba [Afia?], Jafury [Gyamfi?]. They pay regard to the day of birth, too.”13 Located some 12.5 miles away at Adena and perhaps an elderly woman by 1620, Adwoa Bonsu would have easily recognized whatever veracity lied in Brun’s observation while he was 13 Adam Jones, German Sources for West African History, 1599–1669 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1983), 88 (emphasis added).  AKAN “SOUL NAMES” AS ARCHIVES OF HISTORIES AND KNOWLEDGE… 131 stationed in Fort Nassau at Mori and certainly in the name “Quaku” (Kwaku)—male whose “day of birth” is Wednesday. But Adwoa would not have found strange the presence of other non-Akan, even non-African, names among the same individuals who bore one of the fe/male soul names. “[W]hen we [the Dutch] came to them,” Brun continued, “they gave [their children] Christian names, such as Peter, Paul, John etc. This is very pleasing for them, as if they were being very highly honored. They now give their children Christian names of their own accord.” Since Adwoa was archived in the Portuguese record as “Maria” and by her “soul name” Adwoa, we can be sure the likes of Kwaku or Peter, depending on their level of interaction or interests shared with one or more European trading company, would have undergone some version of the abadinto ceremony Brun described and assumed a Christian name in the company of Europeans. For some indigenes, the deployment of Christian names even served to underscore stature and power among their own, and that they were deserving of not only the names but also the titles which the powerful in Europe bore. In effect, Brun’s observation of the akradin and Christian names around the first two decades of the seventeenth century and Adwoa’s kradin and Christian name recorded more than four decades earlier suggest continuity in the use of akradin among a new cast of European first names. Earlier in the mid-sixteenth century, a few African elites on or with access to the coast and its commerce assumed Christian names, but as an overture to establish or maintain trade relations with Portugal and other European nations. In 1557, the governor of the São Jorge da Mina for- tress wrote to the Queen of Portugal: I had to [send] a [Portuguese] man to the kings of Acanes Grandes [“Big Akan”] and the Acanes Pequenos [“Small Akan”] to get them to mend rela- tions and open up their roads to this fortress. This man spent more than eight months there and reconciled these kings and made them friends, and he opened roads that had been blocked for many years. As a sign of recon- ciliation and friendship he brought to this fortress a son of each of the kings. The son of the King of the Acanes Grandes is his oldest son and heir, and is called António de Brito, the António de Brito who used to be [Portuguese] captain here [between 1543 and 1545] having once visited him. These hos- tages I received at this fortress very warmly, and I ordered them to be given their customary food. 132 K. KONADU After these roads had been opened up and all was completed, there hap- pened to come here a brother of the King of the Acanes Pequenos, and over a black whom he killed in this town a great fight broke out…. To have this set right also cost me afterwards a great deal of trouble, and in bringing the matter to a peaceful conclusion some expense. Dom João [baptized ruler of Fetu] also helped in this, and now I have everything settled and all runs well. After these ships came to port, the wife of António de Brito came here to be with him. I warmly welcomed her and soon made her a Christian, and she took the name Dona Catarina, in recollection of Your Highness, and I and Cristovão d’Oliveira were her godparents.14 Located in the forested interior, “Akan” signaled a non-ethnic but lin- guistically and culturally related group of peoples claiming to be indigenes, not migrants, settling the forest and its fringes for several millennia. These peoples were also the principal merchants who held a monopoly on the sixteenth-century gold trade through a commercial network that included many of the coastal polities. Fetu, a reference to the polity and its people, were less than 9 miles away from the São Jorge da Mina fortress and Adena, where Adwoa presumably lived. Both Fetu and Adena were nodal points within the Akan trading network, and the meaning of renaming rulers, local officials, or even non-elite individuals under Portuguese pro- tection would not have been lost to Adwoa. Having been baptized and assigned the Christian name Maria, Adwoa would have known through observation and experience that Portuguese colonial claims to overseas land and peoples could only become reality through ideological coloniza- tion—“renting” land on which to maintain a fortified presence, but enact- ing subjugation through baptisms, chapels, renaming, bribery, military force, and the symbolic power and prestige derived from membership in the Portuguese empire. The imperialist John II, who ascended the Portuguese throne in 1481, proclaimed himself the “Lord of Guinea,” which most notably included his West African base of commercial operations at Sao Jorge da Mina, and some decades later an anonymous reporter and an official in Portugal’s 14 Instituto dos Arquivos Nacionais/Torre do Tombo (IAN/TT), Corpo Cronològico (CC), pt. 1, maço 101, no. 25, Letter of Afonso Gonçalves Botafogo to the Queen, 18 April 1557. See also A. Teixeira da Mota and P.E.H. Hair, East of Mina: Afro-European Relations on the Gold Coast in the 1550s and 1560s (Madison: African Studies Program, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1988), 64–66.  AKAN “SOUL NAMES” AS ARCHIVES OF HISTORIES AND KNOWLEDGE… 133 Council of State pushed for an all-out colonization of the Gold Coast, from Akyem to Nkrãn (Accra).15 The king’s claim was meaningless outside of Portugal and a settler colony was unrealistic against the backdrop of a tropical climate and its diseases, sovereign African polities which competed with each other and the various Europeans along the Gold Coast, and the inability to coerce the producers and distributors of the gold which kept the Portuguese in the region. These realities forced the Portuguese on the Gold Coast to use a mixture of force, fraud, and overtures to get powerful merchants, such as the Akan, to open the paths upon which the gold trav- eled to the coast and to maintain this unstable cooperation through Christian baptisms. The Portuguese tacitly, if not explicitly, viewed bap- tism, renaming, and ongoing (though haphazard) indoctrination as rituals of submission to Portuguese overlordship. The Africans had other ideas, even among those who acquiesced. In 1503 the Portuguese baptized Sakyi (“Sasaxy”) of Fetu “through the great cleverness of the [Portuguese] captain” and renamed him Dom João (effectively erasing his “African” identity and memory in the histori- cal record), but the “Xeryfe,” a principal figure of neighboring Akatakyi, only entertained the idea of baptism.16 These actual and potential conver- sions, whatever their full meaning to the targeted, were part of a mutually attractive commercial package generally formed between Portuguese and African ruling factions.17 The price of Portuguese support included an acceptance of Christianity and its God, “especially where Portuguese troops or shipments of arms were requested” and where the Portuguese viewed their protection or support of a sign of overlordship.18 The Sao Jorge da Mina fortress and the village of Adena were placed under the 15 Blake, Europeans in West Africa, 1: 18; Brásio, MMA, 3: 89–113; John Vogt, Portuguese Rule on the Gold Coast, 1469–1682 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1979), 122. 16 Blake, Europeans in West Africa, 1: 95; ANTT, CC, parte I, maço 4, doc. 32, Letter of Diogo D’Alvarenga to King Manuel I, 18 August 1503; CC, parte I, maço 3, doc. 119, Letter of Nuno Vaz de Castello to King Manuel I, 2 October 1502. This letter notes de Castello’s arrival and reception at Mina, and as well as his visit to Xarife (Xeryfe) of Komenda and perhaps the “king of Efuto [Fetu]” as well. 17 Brásio, MMA, 1: 191. On the Portuguese courting African rulers while Duarte Pacheco Pereira was governor of the Mina fortress and town, see ANTT, CC, parte II, maço 85, doc. 200 (20 November 1519), CC, parte II, maço 87, doc. 30 (21 January 1520), CC, parte II, maço 88, doc. 137 (3 April 1520), CC, parte II, maço 89, doc. 80 (7 May 1520), CC, parte II, maço 89, doc. 82 (8 May 1520), CC, parte II, maço 90, doc. 13 (7 June 1520). 18 Ivana Elbl, “The Portuguese Trade with West Africa, 1440–1521” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 1986), 226. 134 K. KONADU Portuguese king and both were referred to as “our city” and “our village of Mina” from 1503 onward; the overlordship, effectively, carved out a geographically small but economically profitable colonial enclave between the late fifteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Adwoa lived in the vil- lage but likely worked in the fortress and was certainly known to Portuguese officials residing in the fortress. That the likes of Adwoa was a hindrance to Portuguese ideological conquest and its contemplated colonial project provides a measure of these processes: few Africans on the coast and proxi- mate to the Portuguese, including Adwoa, practiced the Christian faith and even the inducement of cash rewards to Portuguese captains at the fortress for each convert failed as most converts did not remain so.19 With the exception of a few baptized rulers and their sons, the killing of all the Augustinian clergy but one in the decade the anonymous official wrote about Adwoa suggests that Christianization was as strong as the waning Portuguese presence and power on the Gold Coast.20 If Adwoa was a young woman in the 1570s, the elder Adwoa, if alive by the 1630s, would have witnessed the ouster of the Portuguese from the Gold Coast and new European competitors, but also the persistence of a naming system which featured the widespread akradin in the face of as many alternative names (and identities) as there were Dutch, British, Swedish, Brandenburger (German), French, and Danish nationals on 350 miles of contested Atlantic coastline. By the 1670s, Adwoa would have likely made her transition from the temporal to the ancestral world (asamandoɔ), while European dominance on the Gold Coast littoral would have shifted from the Portuguese to the Dutch and the British. Other than the line which includes her name(s) in the anonymous Portuguese report of 1572, we know virtually nothing of Adwoa’s life. With so many questions to ask about that life but with no way to answer them I have had to use her “soul name” to engage in informed speculation—with the goals of this chapter in mind—on a life she could have lived. We know her parents would have been married since marriage among the Akan is never fully consecrated or complete until a child is born. We can also be certain her parents were Akan peoples since, beyond her name, there is nothing in the records suggesting she was a 19 da Mota and Hair, East of Mina, 93; Vogt, Portuguese Rule, 55. 20 Vogt, Portuguese Rule, 56. See also Brásio, MMA, 1: 426, 444, 502, 519; 2: 351, 513; 4: 87, 136; 8: 185; Ralph M. Wiltgen, Gold Coast Mission History, 1471–1880 (Techny, Ill.: Divine Word Publications, 1956), 20.  AKAN “SOUL NAMES” AS ARCHIVES OF HISTORIES AND KNOWLEDGE… 135 so-called “mulatto” and since she lived in Adena and not the São Jorge da Mina fortress. Her mother would have spent the last month of her preg- nancy with Adwoa in her (matrilineal) clan’s village—Adena—and would have delivered Adwoa the infant in her mother’s house (ofie), where no men, including Adwoa’s father, would have been allowed. The ntorɔ/ntɔn of Adwoa’s father, however, would have been invoked in the Afodie cere- mony when Adwoa’s mother was six or seven months pregnant, further underwriting the inborn spiritual bond between father and child. Adwoa’s successful entrance to this temporal world would have been seen as evi- dence of her father’s ntorɔ/ntɔn taking good care of the developing fetus, and Adwoa’s mother would have observed the taboos and rituals of her father’s and her husband’s ntorɔ/ntɔn—in the latter case, for the benefit of Adwoa. During fetal development, the Akan claim one chooses—in a one-to- one conversation with the Creator—his or her mission to be achieved in the temporal world. Akan coded wisdom proverbially tells us, obi kra ne Onyankopɔn na obi nnyina hɔ (when one takes leave of Onyankopɔn, no one stands there). This negotiated life mission (hyɛbea) is realized as abrabɔ (“ethical ideal and existence”). Ethical existence is regarded as both per- sonal and communal whereas one’s existential mission is individuated, but the community must safeguard its content. In effect, the elder who becomes an ancestor without fulfilling his or her hyɛbea would return to the temporal as many times as necessary to fulfill their mission. The elder who fulfills his or her hyɛbea becomes one of the “evolved” ancestors (nananom nsamanfoɔ), having “crossed the waters” from the mundane to asamandoɔ. Since the personhood of Adwoa, and all Akan persons, would have been constituted by her kra (imbued with hyɛbea and honhom, “breath of life”), sunsum (“spiritual personality”), and the blood (mmogya) of her mother and semen (ahobaa) of her father, each of these elements of the whole human being had their own destination at the time of death. The mmogya that formed the physiological bond between Adwoa and her mother, including the formation of her flesh (honam) and physical body (nipadua), became a corpse (efunu) that faded into Asase Yaa, the earth. Adwoa’s kra, which sustained her conscience and life, returned to the Creator. Her sunsum either perished or was transformed at death, where either it or the mmogya became an ancestral spirit (ɔsaman) that awaited rebirth through a woman of the same abusua or matrilineal clan. The distinctive, “soul name” pattern of which Adwoa’s name was a part persisted stubbornly into the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 136 K. KONADU and in the records of various European observers who had no particular interest or need to record them. French merchant and slaver Jean Barbot published his account in 1688 based on experiences—some first-hand, others through acquaintances—a decade earlier. Barbot made two voyages on French slaving vessels to West Africa between 1678–1679 and 1681–1682. Barbot’s data was geographically and socially limited to the coastal fringes, where African-European interactions—both coerced and free—were most intense and where he collected his information from resi- dents, traders, officers, European agents, and local acquaintances. Around 1678, Barbot wrote: As soon as the Confoe [ɔkɔmfoɔ], or priest, has blessed the child, if we may so call it … the next thing is to give it a name. If the family be above the common rank, the infant has three names given it; the first is the name of the day of the week on which it is born; the next, if a son, is the grand-father’s name; and if a girl, the grand-mother’s; others give their own name, or that of fame of their relations. … The names for boys are commonly, Adom, Quaqou [Kwaku], Quaw [Kwao], Corbei, Coffi [Kofi], & c. and for girls, Canow, Jama [Amma?], Aquouba [Akua], Hiro, Accasiaffa [Akosua], and many more. Besides these names of their own for boys, they frequently add our Christian names, as John, Antony, Peter, Jacob, Abraham, & c. being proud of those European names; but that is practiced only by those that live under the protection of the forts on the coast.21 Barbot’s account underscores two major themes present during the life and afterlife of Adwoa Bonsu. First, the abadinto ceremony and the nam- ing of children based on their day of birth remained as it did in the six- teenth century, if not earlier, under the aegis of the healer-spiritualist (ɔkɔmfoɔ). Second, the presence of both “soul names” and European/ Christian names is not at all surprising; rather, it is the qualification. The use of a European/Christian name in the place of or in addition to a “soul name” seemed a male preoccupation, but even so this practice was “only 21 Jean Barbot, “A Description of the Coasts of North and South-Guinea, 1678–88,” in Awnsham Churchill, A Collection of Voyages and Travels … (London: Messrs. Churchill, 1732), 244 (emphasis added). Among those in Accra, Barbot observed or was told circumci- sion occurred “at no place on the whole coast, but only at Acra; where infants are circum- cised by the priest, at the same time that they receive their names.”  AKAN “SOUL NAMES” AS ARCHIVES OF HISTORIES AND KNOWLEDGE… 137 by those that live[d] under the protection of the [European] forts on the coast,” as in the case of Adwoa and her village of Adena under Portuguese protectorate status. Certainly, variously ranked local rulers and their sons often assumed a European name in addition to their own, and since indigenous warriors, merchants, and clergymen were almost always male and who interacted most with Europeans and their ideologies, Barbot’s observation suggest a “gendered” naming tradition where it seems more Gold Coast men than women carried European names. This was indeed the case in the scant sixteenth-century records. But what is more remarkable is not only the gender-balanced nature of the “soul names”—where each day carries a fe/ male name sharing the same root term (e.g., Monday-born Adwoa [female] and Kwadwo [male]) indicative of basic temperament—but rather the ways in which this naming tradition shaped how Africans on the Gold Coast named themselves and the Europeans they encountered. Ludewig Ferdinand Rømer, Chief Merchant and slaver in the service of the Danish establishments on the Gold Coast, wrote in the mid-eighteenth century: “Those Europeans whom the Blacks especially like are known most of the time by black [sic] names. It is a common practice that, when new Europeans arrive in that country they are each given a name during their first eight days, and it is amusing that the names they are given are rather well suited to their temperaments and the condition of their bodies.” In effect, the European was named as an Akan person would, using the same cultural understandings and criteria but without the meaning of incorporation into and obligations flowing from membership in both patrilineal and matrilineal clans. “Names are changed, too,” Rømer acknowledged, when the European changes his behavior. For instance, an Assistant at Christiansborg who spoke French and had to manage all the trade with the French captains carried on at our fort was called ‘Frenchman’ by the Blacks. Sometime later, on a number of occasions, he revealed that he did not lack courage. The Blacks then unanimously gave him one of the ‘great names’ of Oppoccu [Opoku], Tentjen [tenten, ‘the tall one’] Koko ([korkor,] the [bright one]). In nearly all the towns there are children who are called ‘Frenchman,’ and when you ask them why they do not call their children by that man’s [new] ‘great name,’ since they have named their sons after him, 138 K. KONADU they answer that the son must first prove his virtue before he can receive the man’s ‘great name.’22 Finally, Rømer notes, “Little girls are sometimes called [but not named] ‘Madame,’ after a European woman.” By issuing “both bad and good names to the Europeans,” Africans on the Gold Coast employed their naming system within and outside their cultural world, and, in some ways, contested rather than yielded to the ideological or doctrinal subjugation various European nationals on the Gold Coast desired. CONCLUSION As the story of the “soul name” pushed into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from the likes of the Thursday-born Yaa Asantewaa to the Friday-born Kofi Annan, European/Christian names became more com- monplace but contested as they moved beyond the coastline and into the villages, and as a more strident British imperialism paved the way for churches, colonial cash crops, and consolidated foreign rule in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the Americas, where we find Akan and Akan-descended peoples since the seventeenth century, the akradin intrudes onto the present, remaining persistent in some contexts and assumed by a range of African-descended peoples and morphing into last name positions or various phonetic permutations.23 For instance, we find individuals such as “Coffij” (Kofi), “Cokoe” (Kwaku), “Anna Maria Aba,” and husband and wife “Amboa” and “Adjou” (Adwoa) in early- eighteenth-century Dutch America, and a range of Akan akradin in the Americas during the first half of the nineteenth century, decades after the British abolished transoceanic slaving across the Atlantic in 1807 (see Table 3).24 Those in the Akan homeland would also carry culturally authored names, for these names were not simply artifacts from a “past” 22 Ludewig Ferdinand Rømer, Tilforladelig Efterretning om Kysten Guinea—A Reliable Account of the Coast of Guinea (1760), trans. and ed. Selena A. Winsnes (London: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 2000), 162–63. 23 For fuller discussion, see Kwasi Konadu, The Akan Diaspora in the Americas (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). 24 National Archives, The Hague, Tweede West-Indische Compagnie (WIC), 1.05.01.02 (Ingekomen brieven met bijlagen van Curaçao), 201–208, 213, 6 April 1703–16 November 1739. These are, of course, composite dates, covering not all—but most—volumes and dates in the range. Table 3 Akan “Day Names” from Captive Africans Procured East of the Gold Coast, 1810–1829a Marquis de Romanab (1810) S. Jos (1813) Des de Fevreiro Firmec (1828) Voladorad (1829) (1822) Male Female Male Female Male Female Male Female Male Female Kwadwo (9) Adwoa (1) Kwadwo (8) Adwoa (1) Adwoa (1) Kwadwo (0) Adwoa (0) Kwadwo (0) Adwoa (0) Kwabena (0); Abena (0) Kwabena (0); Abena (1) Abena (2) Kwabena (2); Abena (0) Kwabena (0) Abena (0) Kwamena (7); Kwamena (5) Kwamena (1) Kobina (2) Kwaku (7) Akua (2) Kwaku (15) Akua (2) Kwaku (25) Akua (0) Kwaku (6) Akua (0) Yao/w Quao, Yaa, Aba (2) Yao/w Quao, Yaa, Aba (3) Aba (1) Yao/w Quao, Yaa, Aba Yao/w Quao, Yaa, Aba (0) Kwao (6) Kwao (2) Kwao (12) (0) Kwao (2) Kofi (9) Afia, Afua Kofi (6) Afia, Afua (6) Kofi Kofi (24) Afia, Afua Kofi (4) Afia, Afua (0) (2) (1) (0) Kwame (0) Ama, Amba Kwame (0) Ama, Amba Ama (2) Kwame (20) Ama, Kwame (9) Ama, Amba (0) (6) (3) Amba (0) Kwasi (3) Akosua, Esi Kwasi (6) Akosua, Esi (4) Kwasi (10) Akosua, Kwasi (7) Akosua, Esi (0) (2) Esi (0) a The names and numbers of individuals named in the table come from the combined searches of two related databases: the “Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database” [TASTD] (www.slavevoyages.org/tast/database/search.faces) and the “African Origins: Portal to Africans Liberated from Transatlantic Slave Vessels” database (http://african- origins.org/african-data). I first searched the latter by known “day names” and then by vessels, selecting the sample used in the table and comparing the details of the “African Origins” database with the TASTD b 101 captive Africans disembarked at Freetown, Sierra Leone. Seventy percent among the group were male; the number of Akan male “day names” should be against the total number of male captives, estimated at sixty-nine or seventy c The “country” for these voyagers was “Mina,” but clearly this trademark did not refer to the coast of Dahomey/Benin exclusively or most importantly, given the numbers and kinds of stubbornly Akan names. For instance, nowhere else in these registers of names for the enslaved did I find “full” Akan names such as Kwaku Mensa, Kwame Fuch (Buah?), Kofi Eson, Kwame Esa, Kwame Apea, Kwasi Kuma, and specific non-soul names (kradin) such as Amankwa, Nkansa, Sakyi, Okyere, Osafo, Onipa, Akyampon, Mensa, Nkrumah, Afram, Obosom, and Onyame d The “country” of the individuals named was “Mina janti” or “Mina Asante,” that is, Akan peoples originating either from the Asante heartland or between the “Mina coast” and the forested Asante region 140 K. KONADU that was “traditional” and awkwardly existing in the “modern”; they rep- resent a continuous present for history as human action simply accumu- lates and that accumulated knowledge shaped the names and the lives of its holders. Viewed from this perspective, the European colonial encoun- ter beginning in the late fifteenth century was a process of securing coastal liaisons through commerce and Christian names, hoping these baptismal mechanisms would ensure dependency and place indigenous culture on inquisitional trial among the Africans encountered. But there was and is something in the underwriting effect of those “soul names” which did not (yet) yield to five centuries of colonial and missionary overtures. Today, many Akan culture bearers, regardless of their registered Christian names assigned from missionary or government schools, still hold that such names affect their lives in concrete ways. According to Kwabena Darko, who was interviewed by linguists Samuel Obeng in 1994, “Sɛnea yɛde wo to Temanmuhunu a, woremmɔ bra pa biara, na yɛde wo to Kɔɔayie a, ayie mpa wo fie da no, saa ara nso na sɛ yɛde wo to Afiriyie a, berɛ biara na siadeɛ di w’anim” (Just as one leads an unproduc- tive life if one is named Sit-in-a-country-do-nothing, or one’s life is rid- dled with deaths [funerals] if one is named S/he-went-to-a-funeral, so does one have good luck in abundance if one is named He-came-at-a- good-time). For Ama Dapaa, also interviewed by Obeng, akradin remain markers of historical time and circumstances: “Na me nana-baa frɛ me Ama Kɔɔayie efisɛ yɛwoo me Memeneda; ɛda a ɔhene panin no wuiɛ no. Nso nnipa a yɛne wɔn bɔ afipam no frɛ me Ama Dapaa efisɛ saa Memeneda no yɛ dapaa” (My grandmother used to call me Ama Kɔɔayie “Saturday- born female person who went to a funeral” because I was born on Saturday, the day on which the big Chief passed away. However, the people in our neighborhood call me Ama Dapaa because that day was “Holy” Saturday).25 European colonialism, whenever we mark its beginnings, was not this great rupture between “traditional” and “modern” African societies nor, therefore, should its periodization of African history. Naming African his- tories “pre-colonial” or “post-colonialism” stands at odds with the histo- ries of Africans like Kwabena and Ama, who are participants in a naming culture and a set of histories encoded in each “soul name.” If a study of Akan akradin through one specimen—our guide Adwoa—can reveal what has remained and what has been archived in a naming culture over five centuries, just imagine if the people for whom these names were designed begin to view them as critical markers of personhood and as new areas of serious study. 25 Obeng, African Anthroponymy, 1, 25.  AKAN “SOUL NAMES” AS ARCHIVES OF HISTORIES AND KNOWLEDGE… 141 REFERENCES Addow, E. R. (1969). Edin ne Mmrane. 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Divine Word Publications. Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí Hewan Girma Editors Naming Africans On the Epistemic Value of Names