What Languages are in Names? Exploring the Languages in Church Names in Ghana

Abstract

Several studies over the years have employed the rhetorical question "What is in a name?" to uncover the semantic-pragmatic imports of names. This paper examines church names (ecclesionyms) which constitute part of the religio-onomastic landscape of Ghana to discover the various languages embedded in them. To achieve this task, we gathered names of churches from ‘online’ (websites of associations of Christian churches) and ‘offline’ sources (posters, signages and billboards). We manually searched the data and identified all languages embedded in the church names. Guided by Akoto’s (2018) global-local model of language choice, the analysis showed that churches in Ghana generally adopt three global languages (Hebrew, Greek and Latin), a glocal language (English) and three local languages (Akan, Ewe and Ga). It is argued that the status of the global, glocal and local languages as canonical/biblical languages, an ‘ethnically neutral’ language and ‘Ghanaian majority’ languages respectively enable the churches to foreground their uniqueness. Implications for language planning in religion are discussed. Keywords: church names, ecclesionym, glocal language, identity, language choice