ǂʼAmkoe had previously been lumped in with the Tuu languages, perhaps over confusion with the dialect name ǂHȍȁn, but the only thing they have in common are typological features such as their bilabial clicks.

Honken & Heine (2010) coined the term Kxʼa for the family as a replacement for the rather inaccessible compound Ju–ǂHoan (easily confused with the Juǀʼhoan language), after the word for 'earth, ground', which is reconstructed as *kxʼà and is shared by the two branches of the family, though also by neighboring languages such as Kwadi.

However, Starostin (2003)[2] argues that the bilabial clicks are a secondary development in ǂʼAmkoe.

She postulates that these reflect labialized clicks in Proto-Kxʼa: *ǀʷ *ǃʷ *‼ʷ *ǁʷ.

The lack of **ǂʷ is not surprising, given the relative rarity of labiovelarized palatals crosslinguistically.