Originally this was going to be a reply to the “All About Nameberry Quick Question Thread” but it got really long so I’ve made a new topic!
I’ve noticed that on the Advanced Search feature, there are a lot of origin options that don’t actually have any names come up when you select them in search (without limiting any other criteria) – such as Akeradini, [name_f]Ashanti[/name_f], Bobangi, Hopi, [name_m]Ibo[/name_m] (possibly a typo for Igbo?), Mashona, Miwok, Mwera, Omaha, Osage, Seminole, Sumerian, Tongan, Tswana, and Uganda. I don’t know if this is a glitch or if there aren’t any names categorized into these groups?
I think it’s possible because many of these languages/cultures are a) Indigenous to the Americas, or b) African languages, that the names meant to be in these categories have instead been put under the umbrella categories of “Native American” and “African” and therefore don’t show up under their specific origins?
In addition, there seem to be a lot of duplicate categories, such as Ojibwa and Ojibway being separate categories despite referring to the same culture. There are also two options for Sanskrit that return different names depending on which you choose. Slovene and Slovenian are also listed as different categories with different names, despite referring to the same language/culture. Similarly, Ukranian and Ukrainian are both options that return different names, and there is both Uganda (which has no names) and Ugandan (which does) and Yoruba and Yoruban which return different names.
Lastly, I can’t find any references at all to an Akeradini language or people anywhere online? I see one source that says Akeradini is the term for the deity-name part of a traditional name in Ghana, but there’s no citations on the page to back that up and it doesn’t seem to be written by someone actually from Ghana. So I think Akeradini isn’t actually an origin at all but possibly a type of given name within Akan or Ewe names?
Anyway, I recognize that the Nameberry team is always very busy keeping this site running (thank you!) and I know there are some pieces of the site that can’t be edited at the moment, but I think cleaning up the “Origin” feature would be a worthy thing to add to the to-do list!