Dangme death-prevention names: A socio-onomastic study

Personal names reflect the culture, cognition and worldview of a people. The Dangme, like many African ethnic groups use names as antidote to prevent infant mortality. Dangme death-prevention personal names have not attracted much attention in Dangme ethnolinguistics scholarship. Thus, this article seeks to fill this gap. The work investigates the categories of Dangme death-prevention names. It examines the relationship between culture and the environment in the context of Dangme naming practice, as well as the psychological incentive for the bestowal of death-prevention names. It also investigates the place of death prevention names in the contemporary Dangme society from socio-onomastic and ethnopragmatic theoretical standpoints, which offer an analytical tool for fleshing out the social, cultural and situational interpretations of death-prevention names in the Dangme naming context. Data were collected through interviews from the Manya Klo, Yilo Klo and Shai Osudoku traditional areas in South-eastern Ghana. Findings show that the Dangme people use loaned names to hide the ethnic identity of children to guarantee their survival. This strategy reveals that death-prevention names shield children from infant mortality. The article concludes that the conferral of Dangme death-prevention names is on the decline in contemporary times.