Egyptian hieroglyphic alphabet and how to write your name in hieroglyphs accurately

in this video I'm gonna walk you through what you need to know about some of the most commonly used ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs how to read them and how to use them to write names these are the first hieroglyphic signs that learned when was learning Egyptian in graduate school but you don't need to go to graduate school to learn these signs just stick with me through this video welcome to voices of ancient Egypt where we demystify the words and lives of the ancient Egyptians through animated videos like this one if you're new here I'd love to have you subscribe and hit that Bell icon so you don't miss future videos like this one let's jump right into the three things that you need to know about these hieroglyphics signs in the so called hieroglyphic alphabet number one some sounds in English and Egyptian were basically the same but Egyptian also had sounds that English does not many of the sounds that these twenty-five signs can represent are the same or very close to the consonants in English and it's popular practice today to write your name in hieroglyphs or have somebody else do it for you certainly when was kid my parents bought me one of those your name and hieroglyphs cartouche necklaces because loved ancient Egypt and it was great gift really loved it wore it all the time but when was bit older and first started really studying hieroglyphs myself quickly discovered that my necklace did not really spell something that sounded exactly like my name this is because many people write out these lists of one consonant signs in Egyptian as if they're exactly the same as our modern alphabet you've probably seen these so called hieroglyphic alphabet charts around but this is not entirely correct which causes most of the writings of modern names in hieroglyphs to really have the wrong combination of signs to represent the sounds in your name let's look at an example let's say Jane wants to have her name written in hieroglyphs on ring or necklace so she places an order for somebody to do that she gets back her name spelled like this with Cobra an arm wavy water line and relief with some further study Jane discovers the snake sign is really great choice for the first sound in her name as it's basically equivalent to the English Jay adjust sound likewise the water sign in the third position is basically equivalent to our so this is good choice too however she soon discovers that the other two signs aren't quite right before moving on to what's wrong with these other two signs wanted to let you guys know that have free guide on how hieroglyphs work and how to write your name which includes full list of these signs that I'm talking about today so you can head on over to my website which is linked in the description below or type in voices of ancient Egypt com / guide that's voices of ancient Egypt com / guide so hit pause go grab the guide and then come back and finish this video number 2 there are no vowels in Egyptian writing so you may have noticed earlier that when mention these 25 signs said that they represented consonant sounds and you might have been wondering what about the vowels well the ancient Egyptians actually did not write the vowels at all only the consonants and this may seem strange at first for people who don't use this type of writing system but it's actually practice that shows up in other writing systems such as those of Arabic and Hebrew and even in English if you're native speaker you probably don't have much trouble reading things where the vowels have been taken out especially if you've been texting for many years now so for example if you see this you know that this means tomorrow seriously and even if you haven't done this maybe in the past if you were apartment hunting back when you needed to do that in newspaper where space was limited and you saw an apartment described with this phrase HB FL RS you would know that that apartment had hardwood floors let's go back to genes name and hieroglyphs now can you guess what's wrong with the spelling of her name let's think about it for moment should there even be four hieroglyphs to spell her name what sounds are in the name Jane ja right only three sounds in English the final is not pronounced it's silent so there's no reason to add an extra hieroglyph on the end like the relief to represent the now since the ancient Egyptians didn't write vowels Jane soon realizes that there's actually no equivalent for the anyway even if it was pronounced in her name and no equivalent for the either the sign used for the in her name instead actually indicates type of laryngeal sound that is sound that one makes by tensing the throat while speaking this letter is called lion in many related languages and it sounds something like that first sound in the name mine but forgive my English accent on that so Jane discovers that the spelling of her name and hieroglyphs that we saw before would actually be pronounced something along the lines of jiying yeah instead of being actually close to her name and again if you speak language that has these sounds in it please forgive my English speakers accent so to actually render jeans name in more realistic combination of hieroglyphs would suggest to use just the Cobra and the water sign the and the because we don't need any vowels alternatively you could actually put the relief in the name but wouldn't put it at the end like we saw before would put it in the middle and that's because the relief actually represented very light sound very slight yeah and when we say the name Jane in English we tend to pronounce it with this very slight sound just before the Jane so you could use and or Cobra relief water however should point out that it is common use among Egyptologists to treat the arm and the vulture signs like they are an in Egyptian so Jane could still conceivably use the arm for the in her name if she liked though it wouldn't be actually exact equivalent to the Egyptian number three some English sounds did not exist in Egyptian alright so let's look at some other examples to see how this part works in the last video showed you my name in hieroglyphs and promised you closer look at my name and why chose the hieroglyphs did so that's what I'll do right now but if you haven't seen the video there's link in the description below and in the cards up in the corner so as you can see here for the in my name actually use an and that's because Egyptian didn't actually have an owl sound in the language and for most of Egyptian history they used an or sometimes an and an together to substitute for when they had to write foreign names now you've probably seen these hieroglyphic alphabet charts that show lion as the sound and this was used in later Egyptian history especially when they had to represent this sound in Greek names lot but for most of Egyptian history they didn't do this so prefer to stick with using an to substitute but of course for your own name you can do it whichever way you like next you'll notice that did not use any hieroglyphs to represent an equivalent for the and the in my name this is of course because of there not being any vowels in Egyptian now since we don't know exactly how most ancient Egyptian words were pronounced modern Egyptologists do treat the relief as either or long sound and the quail chick as either w-wha or along sound though they're not actually vowels and when these weak consonants are not present Egyptologists insert short sound so like if sometimes called schwa in between the consonants so that we can say them aloud and understand each other so since don't actually have like sound or or even these long vowels it makes more sense to see that substitution of short vowels so Madeline for example which works totally fine without having to put any higher glyphs in there but you probably noticed that did use the vulture at the end of my name to represent the now this honestly is bit more of stretch in my choices as far as trying to get as close to the Egyptian as possible could have just as well left it out and not put anything in that spot because this sign which we call olive is really not vowel it's actually more along the lines of what's called glottal stop this is the noise that's made when you clench your throat to stop sound from coming out so it's like the sound in the middle of when you say for example you clench your throat to stop that sound so this is really not exactly realistically equivalent to the in my name of course just decided to go with it that way like the way it looks when you do your own name you can always make these judgment calls yourself as well as to whether to include sign for an sound or an oo for example let's look at another example this one's maybe little bit simpler the name Rebecca would spell it with the mouth hieroglyph for are the leg for and the basket for cake now if we wanted to follow the modern convention again of using vulture or an arm for an sound we could do that at the end of this name as well just like did in my name but we could also leave it out if we wanted now because we treat lack of vowels or weak consonants in word by using sort of substituted short sound Egyptologists would actually read this aloud just like the way we say the name Rebecca in English it would just be Rebecca in addition to the ancient Egyptians not having sound equivalent for our letter they also did not have an exact equivalent for our letter of sound so if you have this in your name you'll need to substitute something similar such as the or since these are both linguistically similar sounds to let's look at one last Western name example so if we wanted to write the name Wilson for example as one would have done through probably most of Egyptian history if they had to render this name would do it like this quail chick for the mouth which is an of course substituting for the that doesn't exist in Egyptian folded cloth for and water for and just wouldn't put anything in for the equivalent of the vowels since we don't have any weak consonant sounds here then there would have to be also one additional sign at the end which haven't mentioned yet that is seated man in this case you might have noticed for Rebecca and Melinda we also need seated woman at the end these signs are what Egyptologists call determinative in essence they help you categorize word in this case it lets us know that we're dealing with names or some kind of description of person two of them of course belonging to women and one to man now if you haven't seen it already the previous video in this playlist is all about determinative so you can find that in the description below and link and also in the cards to this video let's look at one popular name in ancient Egyptian the name set up this literally means health or healthy but if you saw it written like this with the and and seated man determinate 'iv you would know this is actually man's name set up rather than being used as an adjective that is descriptive word describing somebody as being healthy so what's your name and how would you write it in hieroglyphs don't forget to download my free guide and use it to write your name and then come back to me and show me what you got can't wait to see your name in hieroglyphs in this video I've shown you all examples that read from left to right just like English but did you know that you can read and write hieroglyphs actually in the reverse direction or even from top to bottom so how do you know which direction to read in well that's what you'll learn in the next video which you can find linked right here and if it's not out yet make sure to hit subscribe and that bell so you don't miss it see you in the next video you