It is based on the reconstructed words *kho ("water") and *bwa ("fire").
Both Van Driem and Blench group the Sherdukpen (or Mey), Lishpa (or Khispi), Chug (Duhumbi) and Sartang languages together.
[2] These languages have traditionally been placed in the Tibeto-Burman group by the Linguistic Survey of India, but the justification of this is open to question.
Word lists and sociolinguistic surveys of Kho-Bwa languages have also been conducted by Abraham, et al. (2018).
Lieberherr (2015) considers Puroik to be a Tibeto-Burman language, which would imply that at least Bugun is as well.