The second sees the name as a calque for the old Egyptian term "Upper and Lower Egypt," proposing a combination of the Old Nubian suffixes -do ("upon") and -tauo ("under").

It had been generally held that Dotawo was one of a number of small successor states to emerge during the prolonged collapse of central government in the Christian kingdom of Makuria.

The texts from Qasr Ibrim show the Eparch of Nobatia (northern Nubian) to be subordinate to the King of Dotawo during Makuria's peak in the 12th century.

[5] In 2021, it was suggested that the name "Dotawo" appears so late in the history of Christian Nubia because it referred specifically to the unified kingdom of Makuria and Alodia after a personal union between their royal families in the eleventh century.

However, in 2023 Adam Simmons pointed to overlooked evidence in Terceira Década da Ásia by the Portuguese historian João de Barros for the existence in the 1520s of a Christian Nubian queen who de Barros called Gaua, and suggested that Dotawo continued as an independent polity between the Ottomans to the North and the Funj to the south into the seventeenth century.