Topi

About the Topi

Damaliscus lunatus jimela is a subspecies of topi, and is usually just called a topi. It is a highly social and fast type of antelope found in the savannas, semi-deserts, and floodplains of sub-Saharan Africa. The word tope or topi is Swahili, and was first recorded in the 1880s by the German explorer Gustav Fischer to refer to the local topi population in the Lamu County region of Kenya; this population is now designated as Damaliscus lunatus topi. Contemporaneously, in English, sportsmen referred to the animal as a Senegal hartebeest, as it was considered the same species as what is now recognised as D. lunatus korrigum.

Other names recorded in East Africa by various German explorers were mhili in Kisukuma and jimäla in Kinyamwezi. The Luganda name was simäla according to Neumann, or nemira according to Lugard. By the turn of the 19th century this antelope was called a topi by most in English. Writing in 1908, Richard Lydekker complains that it would have so much simpler if all these new forms of korrigum had simply been called East African korrigum, Bahr-el-Ghazal korrigum, etc., than constantly adopting different native names for different geographic forms of essentially... Wikipedia →