Ask most Ghanaians where their surname comes from, and you will likely get a shrug, because by now names like Nelson, Hesse and Vanderpuije feel just as Ghanaian as any Akan or Ga name.
But scratch the surface, and you will find that a good number of the surnames carried by families along the coast today trace back to European traders, officials and soldiers who lived on the Gold Coast during the Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, Swedish and British trading eras, and to the Ghanaian women they married or had children with.
Europeans left their names behind after coming to Africa, and over generations those names became fully claimed as Ghanaian.
Here are 14 Ghanaian surnames, and the story behind how each one ended up in a Ghanaian family tree.
VANDERPUIJE
Vanderpuije, sometimes spelt Vanderpuye, is a Dutch surname most commonly found among the Ga in and around Accra. It comes from the Dutch presence on the Gold Coast, where the Dutch operated trading posts and forts for close to three centuries before ceding control to the British in 1872.
The name entered Ghanaian history through Jacobus van der Puije, who served as governor of the Dutch Gold Coast in 1780, and it has stayed attached to Accra’s public life ever since. Alfred Oko Vanderpuije carries it today. He served as Mayor of Accra from 2009 to 2017 and now represents Ablekuma South in Parliament.
QUIST
Quist is a surname with roots in both Britain and Sweden, a small trace of the overlapping European powers that once held territory on the Gold Coast.
It found its way into one of the most significant offices in Ghanaian history through Sir Emmanuel Charles Quist, who was elected the first Speaker of the Legislature in 1951 and stayed in post until December 1957, a few months after Ghana gained independence.
Other public figures who bear the name include Ghanaian-British business and technology executive Lucy Quist and former Ghanaian broadcast engineer Ralph Quist
HESSE
Hesse is a German surname, likely left behind by one of the many nationalities of officials and merchants who worked the Gold Coast trading forts, not always under the flag of their own country.
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A Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Mary Chinery-Hesse and Ghanaian technology entrepreneur and founder of the SOFTribe, the late Herman Chinery-Hesse are members of this family
LUTTERODT
There are two entirely separate histories and families that share this surname. One traces its roots to Osu, the old Danish quarter, and belongs today to Rev. Cyril George Carstensen Lutterodt, the marriage counsellor known simply as Counsellor Lutterodt, born there to Jeremiah Alexander Lutterodt and Elizabeth Holm
The other runs through Jamestown and Brazil, by the Taboms, the formerly enslaved people who bought or won their freedom in Bahia and returned to Accra in 1836. Today, the family is led by W. L. Lutterodt, head of the Mamah Nassu family and custodian of Brazil House, which is the Jamestown home one of those returnee families built.
SVANIKIER
Svanikier is a Swedish surname, tracing back to the brief Swedish Gold Coast of the 1650s, a colony that barely lasted a decade. The name outlived it by nearly four centuries. Today, it belongs to Johanna Odonkor Svanikier, a Ghanaian diplomat, and Thomas Svanikier, a Ghanaian entrepreneur.
NELSON
Nelson tells two separate stories in Ghana, which is why it’s worth pausing on. It exists as a straightforward British colonial surname, carried into Ghanaian families the same way Vanderpuije and Quist were.
But it is also the name of a Tabom founder: the leader of the Tabom group at the time of their arrival in 1836 was a returnee named Nii Azumah Nelson, and until 2025 the Tabom leader was Nii Azumah V, a direct descendant of Nii Azumah Nelson.
Azumah Nelson, Ghana’s three-time world boxing champion known as The Professor, carries the same surname.
BARTELS
Bartels is one of the best-documented Euro-African families on the coast, founded by Cornelius Ludewich Bartels, Governor-General of the Dutch Gold Coast from 1798 to 1804, and his son Carel Hendrik Bartels, described as the most important mulatto trader on the Gold Coast in the second quarter of the nineteenth century.
The family stayed prominent well into the twentieth century through figures like Gold Coast-era author and socialite Charles Francis Hutchison, and it carries into recent politics through Kwamena Bartels, MP for Ablekuma North from 1997 to 2009 and his daughter Sheila Bartels
MILLS
According to family sources, the name Mills traces to John Edward Hutton Mills, a James Town merchant who married Emma Bannerman, daughter of Governor James Bannerman. Their son Thomas Hutton-Mills Sr. became the first President of the National Congress of British West Africa in 1920, and the name was carried down through generations.
A separate Mills family also exists, which is that of former President John Evans Atta Mills, whose brother, Dr Cadman Mills, has publicly insisted their own roots lie in Cape Coast
WELLINGTON
European surnames were often adopted through direct administration, education, or service in colonial institutions like the police or military. Wellington is one such British surname popular among the Ga people.
Notable people with the surname include Major General Neville Alexander Odartey- Wellington, a highly distinguished Ghanaian army officer who served as the Chief of Army Staff of the Ghana Army from 1978 to 1979 and his son, Dr. Felix Nii Lantei Odartey-Wellington.
THOMPSON
Thompson, sometimes spelt Thomson, is a British surname popular among the Ga and Fante, and one of the more common English surnames found in coastal Ghanaian communities today.
It reflects the long British commercial and administrative presence on the coast that eventually outlasted every other European power there.
Legendary Gospel musician Cindy Thompson and Dr Nii Moi Thompson of the National Development Planning Commission both carry the Ghanaian surname
GRANT
The Grant family traces their roots through Francis Chapman Grant, a Scottish merchant and one of the earliest to sit on the Gold Coast’s Legislative Council in the 1860s.
He had a grandson who would do rather more with the name. George Alfred “Paa” Grant became a timber magnate, founded the United Gold Coast Convention in 1947, and personally paid Kwame Nkrumah’s passage home from the United States to take up leadership of the movement he had built.
De Graft
A Dutch grandfather is where this one begins, carried down to playwright Joseph Coleman de Graft, and onward in its compound form, de Graft-Johnson, through a line of Ghanaian academics and public servants that includes Joseph W. S. de Graft-Johnson, Ghana’s Vice President from 1979 to 1981.
SUTHERLAND
The name Sutherland entered the Ghanaian space in recent times. It was through a marriage between the mother of modern Ghanaian theatre, Efua Theodora Morgue and Bill Sutherland, an African-American civil rights activist who had settled in Ghana in 1953.
