Akoma: A Symbol Close To A Picture Of Its Own Name

Akoma, the Akan word for heart, is drawn as a stylized heart shape, one of the small number of Adinkra symbols whose form is close to a direct, recognizable picture of its own name rather than an abstracted or proverb-encoded design, which Willis notes makes it unusually legible to outside viewers unfamiliar with the wider corpus's more indirect visual logic. Its meaning centres on patience, tolerance, faithfulness and endurance, qualities the heart is read as the seat of in Akan thought much as it is in many other traditions, and Willis records the symbol functioning specifically as an emblem of an enduring, loving and faithful disposition rather than of romantic love narrowly, a broader emotional and moral register than the heart shape's modern global association with romance alone might suggest to an outside viewer.

Willis notes the plain heart form of Akoma is visually simple enough that carvers reproduce it with very little variation between stamps compared to more elaborate Adinkra designs, and this simplicity is part of why it functions well as a component within compound symbols such as Akoma Ntoaso, where two nearly identical heart shapes are joined rather than redesigned.