It was named for the American biologist Wilfred Hudson Osgood who carried out fieldwork in Ethiopia for the Field Museum in 1926–27.

[5] The toad was common in the Bale Mountains National Park and other montane environments east of the Great Rift Valley, and was also said to be present in an isolated population in the Gughe Mountains, although the existence of this population was based on a single specimen which may have been misidentified.

If the putative population in the Gughe mountains is not included then this toad's total range covered an area of 56 km2 (22 sq mi).

[1] Osgood's Ethiopian toad is mainly a species of tropical montane forest, possibly extending marginally into open moorland.

There is an observation of these toads breeding in a small pool, which was probably temporary, within a grassy glade surrounded by Hypericum woodland during April.