Write Your Name in Hieroglyphics

Type your name below to see it transliterated into ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs using the same signs carved into temple walls over 3,000 years ago.

How Does Name Translation Work?

Egyptian Hieroglyphs Are Consonantal

Unlike English, ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic writing records only consonants — there are no true vowel signs. When Egyptologists need to pronounce Egyptian words, they insert an ‘e’ between consonants by convention. For example, the name nfr is pronounced “nefer” (meaning “beautiful”).

The 24 Uniliteral Signs

The core of the hieroglyphic writing system is a set of 24 single-consonant signs called uniliterals. These work like an alphabet — each sign represents one consonant sound. This translator uses these 24 signs to approximate your name, matching each letter to the closest Egyptian equivalent.

How We Handle Vowels

Since Egyptian has no vowel signs, we use standard Egyptological approximations. The vowels ‘a’ maps to the vulture sign (a glottal stop called aleph). The vowels ‘e’ and ‘i’ use the reed sign (the semi-vowel j/y). The vowels ‘o’ and ‘u’ use the quail chick (the semi-vowel w). These conventions are used by museums, universities, and Egyptologists worldwide.

The Cartouche

Your name is displayed inside a cartouche (Egyptian: shenu) — an oval enclosure with a horizontal line at one end. In ancient Egypt, cartouches were reserved exclusively for royal names: the pharaoh's throne name and birth name. Ordinary Egyptians' names were written without cartouches. We use it here because it's the most recognisable hieroglyphic element and clearly marks the text as a name.

Why It's Not an Exact Translation

This tool produces a phonetic transliteration, not a translation. We're approximating the sounds of your name using ancient Egyptian signs, not translating the meaning. Some English sounds simply didn't exist in Egyptian — for example, ‘l’ and ‘r’ were the same sound, ‘v’ didn't exist (we use ‘f’), and vowels are only approximated. This is the same approach ancient Egyptian scribes used when writing foreign names — they did their best with the sounds available to them.

Academic Sources

The sign mappings in this translator follow the conventions established in Sir Alan Gardiner's Egyptian Grammar (3rd ed., 1957) and James P. Allen's Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs (3rd ed., 2014). The Gardiner Sign List codes (e.g. G1, D21, M17) are the international standard for referencing individual hieroglyphs.

Want to learn to read real inscriptions?

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