Ghana Does NOT Ban Day-of-Week Baby Names Without Special Registration

The Short Answer

The claim that Ghana makes it illegal to name a child after a day of the week without first registering the name with local authorities is false. No such law exists in Ghanaian legislation.

The Full Story

Ghana has one of the world's most celebrated naming traditions: the Akan practice of giving children a 'day name' (kra din) based on the day of the week they were born. Names like Kofi (Friday-born male), Kwame (Saturday-born male), Yaa (Thursday-born female), and Akosua (Sunday-born female) are borne by millions of Ghanaians — including former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Ghana's first president Kwame Nkrumah. The tradition originates with the Akan people, Ghana's largest ethnic group at roughly 47% of the population, and has spread across West Africa and even to the African diaspora in the Caribbean.

So where did this myth come from? There is a real — and genuinely contentious — naming controversy in Ghana, but it has nothing to do with day-of-week names. The Births and Deaths Registry historically refused to register certain traditional Ghanaian 'title-names' such as Nana, Nii, and Togbe, on the grounds that these were honorific titles for traditional rulers, not personal names. This policy provoked significant public backlash: Ghanaian lawyer Ace Ankomah publicly stated that 'there is no law that empowers the Births and Deaths Registry to determine how someone must name their child.' The 2020 Act (Act 1027) did give the Registrar authority to publish a list of prohibited name prefixes and suffixes — but this relates to titles, not to day names.

The myth almost certainly arose from a garbled version of this real controversy, combined with the exotic (to Western audiences) nature of the day-naming tradition, making it ripe for 'weird laws' listicles to misrepresent as a legal prohibition.

Common Misconceptions

People often confuse Ghana's general birth registration requirement (all births must be registered with the Births and Deaths Registry) with a specific prohibition on day-of-week names. Some also conflate the Registry's real but legally dubious informal refusal to register certain traditional title-names (Nana, Nii, Togbe) with a mythical ban on day names. In reality, day-of-week names like Kofi, Kwame, and Abena are among the most common and officially accepted names in Ghana.

Actual Legal Text

No provision in Ghana's Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 2020 (Act 1027) — or its predecessor Act 301 of 1965 — singles out day-of-week names for any special restriction or pre-registration requirement. The Act requires all births to be registered with the Births and Deaths Registry within twelve months, and gives the Registrar power to publish a list of prohibited name prefixes and suffixes (such as certain traditional titles), but contains no rule targeting day-of-week names.