The name comes from both sides of my family.

Nortley is my father’s surname. Torto is my mother’s maiden name. Both names take me back to Ghana, and particularly to the history of Accra and its Ga people. Within the Ga naming system, we have weaved in maps to ancestry which allow us to remain connected to those who came before us. Something about being a part of a bigger tapestry is so important and we often forget our place in the grand design. 

Older Osu naming records show Nuerley, which became Norley, as a female name within the Nadu lineage, alongside Nuerte, or Nortey, in the male line. Over generations, names change, spellings shift and families move, but those traces remain.

Torto has its own journey. The name is associated with the Anahor division of Labadi and Osu, but also carries Portuguese roots another reminder of the layers of history that have shaped Ghana’s coast and its people over centuries.

And then those two family lines eventually meet in me. For me, it’s more than joining two surnames together.It’s a way of honouring both sides of where I come from my father and my mother, the people before them, and everything they carried with them. I’m interested in inheritance: the things we’re given, the things we keep, the things we change and what we choose to pass forward.

That’s what Norto represents.

The past coming together to create something new.

My ancestry behind me.My work in the present. And whatever comes next through that combination 

NORTO.