[2] Nilotic peoples, who are the native speakers of the languages, originally migrated from the Gezira area in Sudan.

[3] According to linguist Joseph Greenberg, the language family is divided up into three subgroups:[4] Before Greenberg's reclassification, Nilotic was used to refer to Western Nilotic alone, with the other two being grouped as related "Nilo-Hamitic" languages.

[5] Blench (2012) treats the Burun languages as a fourth subgroup of Nilotic.

Starostin (2015) treats the Mabaan-Burun languages as "West Nilotic" but outside the Luo level.

[8] Dimmendaal reconstructs the proto Nilotic consonants as follows: Comparison of numerals in individual languages:[9]