u/Ill_Competition3457

Ok so Ive been doing my family tree for a few years now and have been seeing a few other people talk about this, but I have some interesting stuff I found. A few years ago, I found that some of my distant grandparents had these odd names that were pretty unusual. They were all born in the early 1800’s with some of their names being “Quash”, “Cuffie/Cuffy”, and “Affy” . After doing research, I found that these names were anglicized forms of the names “Kwesi/Kwasi”, “Koffi/ Kofi”, and “Affi / Afia”, which are from the Akan people of Ghana. I knew, even as an African American, that my maternal grandfather had heavy Ghanaian on his mothers side but I was not aware of the extent and the fact that names changed like that. I just thought I should post this because it might help someone reading this understand how some people retained these names from their cultures.

I just had the craziest interaction with this older Haitian couple. For reference, majority of my family is from Beaufort, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia and have a Gullah-Geechee twang lol. Anyways, I asked them where they were from, and they said Haiti. The guy then asked me where I was from in Creole (I dont speak Haitian Creole) but I understood him 100%. I responded to him in English and they insisted I was Haitian but didnt want to accept it. 😭😭 It really is amazing that throughout all of these years two worlds of the African Diaspora can collide and understand each other.