Toposa
/təˈpoʊsə/noun
A Nilotic ethnic group and language community primarily living in South Sudan.
Did you know?Toposa is an Eastern Nilotic language, part of a wider family whose migrations connect communities across South Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, and Ethiopia.
Etymological Timeline
Early 1st millennium CE or earlier
Proto-Nilotic
Reconstructed ancestral forms
“Ancestral linguistic stage from which modern Nilotic languages, including Toposa, developed; the specific name Toposa cannot be securely reconstructed.”
Precolonial period
Toposa
Toposa
“Traditional ethnonym for the people; the original internal meaning of the name is uncertain in surviving documentation.”
19th Century
English travel and missionary records
Toposa
“Name recorded in European accounts for the people inhabiting parts of what is now eastern South Sudan.”
20th Century
English
Toposa
“Established English name for the ethnic group and its language.”
Modern English
English
Toposa
“A South Sudanese ethnic group or the Eastern Nilotic language spoken by its community.”
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