Adinkrahene
Adinkrahene, “chief of the adinkra symbols”, is three concentric rings. It stands for greatness, charisma and leadership.
Meaning
Adinkrahene is an Akan symbol from Ghana, stamped on adinkra cloth. The name means the chief, or king, of the adinkra symbols. Samuel Baah Kissi, Peggy Ama Fening and Eric Appau Asante of KNUST place it among the political symbols and say it “symbolizes greatness, charisma and leadership”; the table kept by the Culturally Situated Design Tools project at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute gives the same three words.
Origin and history
The Rensselaer project suggests where the rings came from. A ripple pattern appears on the gold badges of the “soul washers”, the priests who carried out the king’s water rituals, and the project reads the adinkrahene as the same ripples: “ripples of power spread in all directions”. It offers this as a suggestion, not as a recorded tradition.
Read next
- Next in Adinkra symbolsDwennimmen (ram’s horns)Dwennimmen, “ram’s horns”, is the adinkra symbol of humility together with strength: a ram fights fiercely, yet goes meekly to slaughter.
- The same shape in Catholic symbolsMiraculous MedalAn oval medal showing the Virgin Mary standing on a globe with rays falling from her hands, with an M, a cross and two hearts on its back. It comes from the visions of Catherine Labouré in Paris in 1830.
See also
Gye Nyame, Nyame Dua, Nsoromma (star), Osram ne Nsoromma (moon and star), Sankofa, Sankofa (heart).
Sources
- Adinkra Symbols (Culturally Situated Design Tools), Culturally Situated Design Tools (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, with the National Science Foundation), “Adinkra: Symbols”, Culturally Situated Design Tools, table of symbols
- Adinkra Origins (Culturally Situated Design Tools), Culturally Situated Design Tools (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, with the National Science Foundation), “Adinkra: Origins”, Culturally Situated Design Tools, From Nature: Water Drop
- The Philosophy of Adinkra Symbols in Asante Textiles (Kissi et al. 2019), Samuel Baah Kissi, Peggy Ama Fening and Eric Appau Asante (Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology), “The Philisophy of Adinkra Symbols in Asante Textiles, Jewellery and Other Art Forms”, Journal of Asian Scientific Research 9, no. 4 (2019): 29–39, doi:10.18488/journal.2.2019.94.29.39, Asian Economic and Social Society, 2.1 Some sample Adinkra symbols (table)
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from circles.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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