According to the World lexicon of grammaticalization (Heine & Kuteva, 2001: 167-9), there are two main semantic domains for the grammaticalization of the body part noun for HEAD: the spatial domain with locative prepositions for FRONT or UP markers, and the domain of diathesis with the following grammaticalization chain: HEAD > REFLEXIVE > MIDDLE. In Wolof, an Atlantic language mainly spoken in Senegal, the grammaticalized uses of the noun bopp ‘head’ do not contradict these patterns but, nevertheless, they display remarkable characteristics. Beside its nominal uses for referring to the body part ‘head’ (1), bopp is used as a reflexive pronoun with the possessive determiner (2). However this morpheme did not reach the next grammaticalization step as a middle marker: in Wolof, middle voice is expressed through verbal derivation by an –u suffix (3). Remarkably, as shown by Nouguier Voisin (2002), for a few verbs (e.g. gaañ ‘to hurt’ or noppal ‘to give a rest to’) the two constructions can be used alternatively, the reflexive one emphasizing the responsability of the subject/agent in the action, while for most verbs, either the reflexive (e.g. bëgg ‘to love’) or the middle (e.g. sàggan ‘to be careless about’) construction is obligatory for expressing a self-affected agent. (1)Samaboppdafa-ymetti POSS.1SGheadFOC.V.3SG-IPFache ‘I have headache’ [Diouf 2003] (2)Bëggnabopp-am lovePRF.3SGhead-POSS.3SG ‘He loves himself’ (3)Dafaysol-u FOC.V.3SG-IPFdress-MID ‘he is getting dressed’ For bopp, the grammaticalization path has followed another direction: out of emphatic uses as an intensive possessive reflexive (4), the syntactic scope of this term has been extended beyond the predicative relation between subject/agent and object/patient, among others, as a topic marker (5). (4)Sàmbayàqnawotobopp-am SambaruinPRF.3SGcarhead-POSS.3SG ‘Samba has broken his own car’ (5)ndaxñuncisuñubopp, ... becausePRO.1PLinPOSS.1PLhead ‘because, as for ourselves, ...’ Based on a corpus study on some radio programs, this paper will study the distribution of roles between reflexive (Geniusiené 1987) and middle (Kemmer 1987) constructions in Wolof, and account for the various syntactic and semantic constraints on the grammatical uses of bopp in Wolof. It will be argued that, in most of its grammatical uses, the ‘head’ in Wolof has retained some nominal features that points to an initial metonymy of the HEAD for the PERSON at the root of the grammaticalization of this noun.