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How to write your name in hieroglyphs

6 October 2026

To write your name in hieroglyphs, split it into sounds and give each sound the sign that stands for it: the owl for m, the ripple of water for n, the mouth for r. Set the signs in a row or a column. Draw an oval around them and you have a cartouche, the ring Egyptian kings put around their names.

Be clear about what you get. No Egyptian ever wrote an English or Spanish name, and a scribe would have spelled yours his own way. Spelling a modern name letter by letter is a convention of museum shops, teachers and sites like this one. The method behind it is real, though. Scribes of the Ptolemaic and Roman periods spelled the names of Greek kings and Roman emperors with the same sound signs.

The signs that stand for one sound

Egyptian writing mixes signs for whole words, signs for groups of two or three consonants, and about two dozen signs for a single consonant. Egyptologists call that last set the hieroglyph alphabet. The Egyptians never used it as an alphabet on its own; they mixed it with the other kinds of signs in almost every word.

The script also left most vowels out. A word like nfr, 'good', is pronounced nefer today only because modern readers slip an e between the consonants. For a modern name, the vowels are borrowed from three weak consonants: the vulture (ꜣ, usually read as a glottal stop) for a, the flowering reed (i) for e and i, and the quail chick (w) for o and u.

Some charts use the forearm for a instead. Its sound, ꜥ (ayin), comes from deep in the throat and has no English letter, so this site keeps the vulture for a.

Egyptian vulture Flowering reed Quail chick Forearm Owl Ripple of water

Daniel, sign by sign

Take the name Daniel and work from the sounds. D is the hand. A is the vulture. N is the ripple of water. The i and the e each get a flowering reed, so two reeds stand side by side. L is the lion.

That gives six signs: hand, vulture, water, reed, reed, lion. Egyptian writing had no separate sign for l, so Ptolemaic scribes wrote the l of Greek names with the recumbent lion, whose usual value is rw. The cartouche of Ptolemy on the Rosetta Stone uses it, and the same two reeds near its end.

A short name shows the other rules. Sarah becomes folded cloth (s), vulture, mouth (r), vulture and reed shelter (h): five signs, and the h is written although an English speaker barely says it.

Hand Egyptian vulture Ripple of water Flowering reed Recumbent lion Folded cloth Mouth Reed shelter

Letters Egyptian did not have

Some sounds need a choice. The site follows a few fixed rules, and other charts may choose differently:

sh is the pool, one sign for one sound
kh is the placenta, as in the ch of loch
ch and tj are the tethering rope, as in church
j is the cobra, read dj
hard c is the basket, soft c the folded cloth
v and ph take the horned viper (f)
x is written basket plus folded cloth, k and s
y is two strokes; a doubled letter is written once

Pool Placenta Tethering rope Cobra Basket with handle Horned viper Two strokes

Silent letters and spelling by ear

The site reads letters, so a silent letter still gets a sign. Kate ends in a reed for its final e, and Thomas starts with the bread loaf for th, since the site reads th as t.

If that bothers you, type the name the way it sounds. A scribe working by ear would have done the same. Both versions are fair, because there is no single correct Egyptian spelling of a modern name to aim at.

Bread loaf

How Egyptians finished a name

The cartouche belonged to royalty: kings first, then from the late Middle Kingdom some royal women too, and in the New Kingdom and after many queens. Everyone else wrote a name in the line of text, with no ring.

Ordinary names ended with a silent sign, a determinative, that showed what kind of word it was. A man's name took the seated man, a woman's the seated woman. You can add one at the end of yours by hand. It is the most Egyptian touch you can give a modern spelling.

Seated man Seated woman Cartouche

Write it on the site

Type a name on the cartouche page and it is split into letter groups, each with its sign, and set inside a cartouche. Then draw each sign yourself on the drawing pad. Every drawing is checked against the sign, and at the end you can download or share your hand-drawn cartouche.

For a class, the printable alphabet worksheet has each sign with its sound and boxes to practise in.

Write your name in a cartouche

Questions

Which hieroglyph is the letter L?

The recumbent lion. Egyptian writing had no separate sign for l, so scribes of the Ptolemaic period borrowed the lion to spell Greek names like Ptolemy and Cleopatra.

Do I write my name left to right or right to left?

Either way, or top to bottom in a column. Signs that face a direction, like the birds and the lion, look toward the start of the line, so you read into their faces.

Why does my name look different on another website?

Charts disagree on the vowels and on sounds Egyptian lacked. One uses the forearm for a where another uses the vulture, and some write l with the mouth (r) instead of the lion.

Can I use my hieroglyph name for a tattoo or a pendant?

Yes, if you check each sign against its page and keep every animal facing the same way. Treat it as a modern spelling in an ancient script, and have a second person look at it before it becomes permanent.

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Where to see it

Object

Rosetta Stone

The Rosetta Stone carries the same decree in three scripts: hieroglyphs at the top, Demotic in the middle and Greek at the bottom. Its cartouches of Ptolemy V let scholars match Greek letters to Egyptian signs.