Popular names of Liberia, West-Africa

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The history of Liberia, West-Africa, is entangled with the history the United-States of America.

Liberia began in the early 19th century as a project of the American Colonization Society (ACS), which believed black people would face better chances for freedom and prosperity in Africa than in the United States. Between 1822 and the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, thousands of freed and free-born black people who faced social and legal oppression in the U.S., along with Afro-Caribbeans, relocated to Liberia. Liberia was the first African republic to proclaim its independence and is Africa’s first and oldest modern republic. The Americo-Liberian settlers encountered ethnically, linguistically diverse tribal populations.

Try namsor with names from Liberia

Even today, names reflect the diversity of populations in Liberia. Some names appear very similar to names of Afrlcan-Americans. Some other names reflect indigenous cultures.

Most frequent names in Liberia today

Top 30 Male NamesTop 30 Female NamesTop 30 Family Names
EMMANUEL JAMES PRINCE ABRAHAM JOHN JOSEPH JUNIOR MOSES MORRIS SAMUEL PETER MOHAMMED DAVID GEORGE DANIEL AMOS ANTHONY JERRY SAAH VARNEY ALEX ISAAC ERIC THOMAS SAM MARK MOMO MUSA STEPHEN AUGUSTINEMARY HAWA ESTHER ANNIE MAMIE MARTHA ORETHA REBECCA PATIENCE FATU BENDU SARAH PRINCESS MUSU CECELIA VICTORIA RUTH MARIE COMFORT ALICE BEATRICE MASSA MERCY THERESA ELIZABETH HELENA JOSEPHINE LORPU GRACE KOUKOLLIE KAMARA FLOMO JOHNSON MULBAH TOE SUMO COOPER SHERIFF DAVID TOKPAH KROMAH DOLO SACKIE KONNEH PAYE WEAH MORRIS DOE GAYE TAMBA DAHN KANNEH WILLIAMS HARRIS SAYE BROWN SMITH JALLAH FREEMAN
Top 30 most frequent names

This colorful picture represents the ethnic diversity in Liberia as recognized from the morphological diversity in personal names.

Liberia - a regional onomastic mille-feuille
Liberia – a visual representation of names diversity

We used NamSor Clustering (V1) to automatically identify name groups, then we projected those names by geography to validate that the grouping made sense from a cultural, linguistic or anthropological aspect.

Image Credits : Wikipedia (The streets of downtown Monrovia, March 2009)

About NamSor

NamSor™ Applied Onomastics is a European vendor of sociolinguistics software (NamSor sorts names). NamSor mission is to help understand international flows of money, ideas and people.