These are familiar (and thorny!) issues, but this case is somewhat simpler fortunately. Part of the succes of the term GTM lies probably precisely in the fact that it is not much more than a geographical mnemonic. This continues the tradition of geographical references (which is quite widespread in African linguistics anyway, cf. Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan) but gets rid of the derogatory ‘remnant’ adjective.

That it is catching on can be seen from publications in which the term is used (mostly by non-SIL linguists — SIL linguists don’t publish that much anyway) and more importantly by recent workshop in Ghana (summer 2006) that brought together all linguists working on these languages; the term was used in the title of that workshop. All present (among them quite a few Ghanaians) agreed that the ‘remnant’ thing should go, and GTM was the best alternative.

I’m curious if you can say a little more about the process by which the term ‘Ghana Togo Mountain languages’ is catching on. Just thinking about the use of the terms ‘Pre-Andine’ and ‘Kampan’, for example, ‘Pre-Andine’ is now the term favored by SIL and is enshrined in Ethnologue. As a result of the latter, it also tends used by linguists who are not Amazonian specialists. It is also the term most likely to be used by Peruvian linguists — and I think here the influence of SIL in Peru probably plays a decisive role. ‘Kampan’ (and its variants), on the other hand, tends to be used by non-SIL, non-Peruvian Arawakanists and Amazonianists. So there are also institutional and national factors behind the use of these terms. Are there similar factors at work in the case you mention?

As for your comments regarding the lack of comparative analysis regarding the languages you are working on, the same pretty much holds for Southern Arawak, the major branch of Arawak that I work with. As you suggest, proper classification may dispose of many of our nomenclatural problems for us.

The first attempt to change it was in 1988 in a collection on the languages of Ghana; the proposal was to use Central Togo languages. This didn’t catch on because it was something of an anachronism, referring to ‘Togo’ in the old sense of the German colony Togoland.

The most recent alternative has been Ghana Togo Mountain languages, a name that not only captures the geographical distribution more accurately but also captures the fact that we’re still not even sure that this is a valid phylogenetic unit. This was introduced by a SIL linguist in 1995, and it seems to be catching on now.

Trouble is, for most of these languages we simply lack the data to do more in-depth comparative analysis. Perhaps in some ten years this loose geographical grouping will have dissolved into higher-order Niger-Congo branches.