Anglicization of Personal Names: The Case of Akan

Akanpersonalnamesarelosingtheirculturalorethnopragmaticvaluesandmeaningsthroughanglicization.Anglicizationaffectstheform,structure,pronunciation, and original meanings of some indigenous Akan personal names. Personal names are not merely arbitrary labels but sociocultural tags that have sociocultural functions and meanings and provide linguistic information about the Akan culture. This study seeks to examine orthographic changes identified in some anglicized AkanpersonalnamesandtheirimplicationfortheAkanlanguageandculture.This is a descriptive qualitative study. The data for this study were collected from universityrecordsofwrittenAkanpersonalnames.ThepapershowsthatwhenAkan personal names are anglicized, they undergo orthographic modifications such as vowel replacement and consonant replacement. Two prosodic processes such as resyllabification and tone alterations were also observed in the anglicized names. Thepaperconcludesthattheseprocesseshaveaffectedthemeaningsofthenames by eroding their cultural or ethnopragmatic values.