A toponomastic study of suburb names from some Agona towns in the Central region

Abstract

This study is a toponomastic study of suburb names, using the Causal theory of Names as proposed by Evans (1985) and the Frame theoretical framework as proposed by Fillmore (1985). The study investigates the morphological processes, phonological processes and syntactic structure of about seventy (70) suburb names. The suburb names for this study were collected from primary source. The researcher supported the primary data with oral structured interviews to ascertain the complete structure of the names since some of them might have undergone some phonological processes. Purposive sampling technique was employed in the selection of the sample size. The researcher also used inductive and creative synthesis approach to categorize the suburb names under the right morphological, phonological and syntactic divisions. Under the morphological analysis, the study reveals that some Agona suburb names are formed through compounding and affixation. Phonological processes such as vowel harmony, homorganic nasal assimilation and elision are important to this study were examined. The study also shows that some Agona suburb names at the sentential level can function as statements, interrogatives and imperatives and they can structurally be simple, compound and complex sentences. The study reveals that Agona people use personal names, trees or animal names, characteristics of the physical environment of the place, activities/occupation carried out at the place, events/incidents that happened at the place and names from the bible to name their suburbs. The study found that suburb names reveal the history, culture and religious beliefs of the Agona people. Lastly, referential and other cognitive meanings of some suburbs from the categories of the established naming system were identified. The Causal theory allowed for identification of the referential meanings from the community while the Frame theory explains how the meanings are cognitively retrieved from the speakers’ mental encyclopedic knowledge.