Kamba
/ˈkæm.bə/noun
A member of a Bantu-speaking people of southeastern Kenya, or the language traditionally spoken by them.
Did you know?Kamba oral tradition includes powerful specialists known as aimu, diviners associated with communication between the living and ancestral or spiritual forces.
Etymological Timeline
Proto-Bantu, before 500 BCE
Proto-Bantu
*kamba
“A reconstructed form sometimes proposed in connection with the ethnonym, but its precise original meaning is uncertain.”
Early first millennium CE
Eastern Bantu
Kamba
“An ancestral ethnonym associated with Bantu-speaking populations in eastern Africa; the early form is not directly recorded.”
Precolonial period
Kikamba
Kamba
“The self-designation of the Kamba people, whose language is Kikamba.”
19th Century
Swahili
Kamba
“The name used in regional Swahili contexts for the Kamba people.”
19th–20th Century
English
Kamba
“English colonial and scholarly sources adopted Kamba as the name of the people and their language.”
Modern English
English
Kamba
“A Kamba person, or the Kamba language of Kenya.”