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Your Name in Egyptian Hieroglyphics

Occasionally, someone asks me to draw his/her name into a cartouche. Here’s one for Tutankhamun (he was very appreciative):

Most kings had two main names. The above says, “Ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt, Nebkheperura, Son of Ra, Tutankhamun.” Within an Egyptian name, the name of a god is shown first, but may be said last. So Tutankhamun is spelled with “Amun” first, and Nebkheperura is spelled with “Ra” first. The last three signs are abbreviations for “ruler of Lower and Upper Egypt.”

I tell people that only kings (and sometimes queens and high priests) had their names in cartouches. So it is not authentic to have your name in a cartouche, unless you are a king. But it is authentic to spell out your name using the Egyptian Hieroglyphic Alphabet. Here is a table, showing the western alphabet alongside the “equivalent” Egyptian signs, as a GIF file. Below that is some commentary on each letter, followed by three JPEG files. If you have Netscape or Internet Explorer, you should be able to download either graphic file by right clicking on the picture, and choosing “Save Image As…” Then use a paint program to spell out your name. Please try it yourself.

Comments:

* Most WWW pages which spell out your name for you sometimes use questionable letters.
* Silent letters should probably not be written. And, of course, some sounds were not part of Egyptian, like the English “v” (German “w”) or the soft French “j” in Jacques. In such cases, choose something close.

* A: There were three A sounds, all of them pronounced roughly as “ah” (with some guttural aspects). The first A shown here is the traditional one nowadays.
* C: There was no C as such. So I have shown two signs for C, the K and the S. Choose the one that best fits your name. That is authentic, as Egyptian scribes went by the sounds of foreign words, when assigning Egyptian letters to them.
* E: E’s were normally not written. I show the letter I. Apparently Cleopatra spelled her name with an I (KLIOPADRA), when she wasn’t spelling it in Greek, her native language. A name like Fred should probably be FRD, as the English short “e” was not written in Egyptian.
* H: There are two H’s. The first one here is the most popular one nowadays.
* J: This is the hard English J (DJ). So a German J (Y sound in English) or Spanish J (H sound in English) should probably use the more appropriate Y or H, as being more authentic.
* L: There was no L in Egyptian. But Egyptian scribes used the lion (lying down), which was a form of R, for the foreign L.
* O: O was normally not written. But Egyptian scribes used the piece of rope shown above, which was a form of W, for the foreign O.
* V: There was no V; so F is the best I can do, sorry.
* X: X is two letters, KS.
* Z: In early times, Z was distinct from S. So its use here is fairly authentic.

* SH: English sh, German sch.
* OO: Use the U/W sign.
* CH English ch, German tsch.
* KH: As in German ach or Scottish loch.

Often a person’s name was followed by a sign showing that the name is not just some obscure Egyptian word, and that he or she was a man or a woman:

So there you have it.