Nkosi in the sources
Nkosi is among the most widely carried surnames in the Nguni languages, and the books we read give no clan narrative under it, only a table entry and a few individuals.
What the sources say
Bryant. His alphabetical clan table has a row kwaNkosi, with its columns garbled in the machine-read text, so we could not read its address-name or parent clan.
Individuals. Gillis, in his history of the Swazi kingdom, names an Alpheus Nkosi, a mission-educated man from Natal who served the Swazi queen-regent and king as a messenger, interpreter and witness to documents in the 1890s and 1900s.
The word. Nkosi also means chief or lord in several Nguni languages, so the name is not evidence of a single family line.
Cautions
Nkosi is probably several unrelated families sharing one name; our planning list marks it as widely shared. We cannot say more from the sources read. We searched the full text of Bryant (1929), Soga (1930) and Bonner (1983) under the spellings given here and under likely variants; absence from these books says nothing about whether the family is old or important, only that these three sources are silent.
Izithakazelo and totem
We found no Nkosi praise poem or totem that belongs to one family. If yours has one, we would like to record it, credited to you.
Sources and further reading
- A. T. Bryant, Olden Times in Zululand and Natal (London: Longmans, 1929); read in the Internet Archive text, including its alphabetical table of clan names and address-names near the end (machine-read, with garbled columns)
- D. Hugh Gillis, The Kingdom of Swaziland: Studies in Political History (Greenwood Press); read by OCR from a scanned copy
Do you belong to the Nkosi? Tell us your izithakazelo and what elders say about the family’s history, and we will add it, credited to you. Share what you know or WhatsApp 065 138 8213.