Osram ne Nsoromma (moon and star)
Osram ne Nsoromma, “the moon and the star”, is the adinkra crescent with a star above it. It stands for love and faithfulness.
Meaning
Osram ne Nsoromma is an Akan symbol from Ghana, stamped on adinkra cloth. The design-tools table at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute gives its meaning as “Love, faithfulness, and harmony”. J. E. T. Kuwornu-Adjaottor, George Appiah and Melvin Nartey of KNUST, citing Adolph Agbo’s Values of Adinkra Symbols (Kumasi, 2011), give the crescent moon and star as a symbol of faithfulness. The moon on its own, Osrane, is a different adinkra symbol in their account, of patience, steadiness and confidence.
Origin and history
The KNUST authors use this symbol as their example of where the more abstract adinkra designs may have come from. Some, they write, may come from Islam and be older than the Asante state, and the crescent moon and star came from the Asante’s contact with Islamic traders.
Often confused with the star and crescent
Its look-alike is the star and crescent, which has its own page here; the KNUST authors trace this adinkra design to contact with Islamic traders. The two are drawn differently: in the adinkra symbol the crescent lies on its back with its horns up and the star sits above it, and its Akan meaning is faithfulness.
Read next
- Next in Adinkra symbolsSankofaSankofa means “go back for it”. Drawn as a bird turning its head back to an egg, it is the Akan symbol of learning from the past, and it is widely used in the African diaspora.
- The crescent moon in other traditionsCrescent moonThe moon as a thin curve of light, just after the new moon or just before it. It was the emblem of the moon god in ancient Mesopotamia, lies under the Virgin Mary’s feet in Christian art, is worn in Shiva’s hair, and is widely taken as a sign of Islam, though Islam has no official symbol.
See also
Nsoromma (star), Star and crescent, Gye Nyame, Nyame Dua, Sankofa (heart), Mate Masie.
Sources
- The philosophy behind some Adinkra symbols (Kuwornu-Adjaottor et al. 2016), J. E. T. Kuwornu-Adjaottor, George Appiah and Melvin Nartey (Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology), “The philosophy behind some Adinkra symbols and their communicative values in Akan”, Philosophical Papers and Review 7, no. 3 (2016): 22–33, doi:10.5897/PPR2015.0117, Academic Journals, The origin of Adinkra symbols; Osrane (moon)
- 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
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves or stars.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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