Egyptian dog names: real names from ancient Egypt and their meanings

Part 1

What ancient Egyptian dog names looked like

A stela belonging to the ruler Intef II shows him with three named dogs standing before him. Dogs, unlike cats, were regularly given names that were written onto their collars. A pair of pink-dyed collars from the tomb of the courtier Maiherpri included one inscribed with the name Tantanuit.

You can see clear patterns in how these names were chosen. Nefer, meaning Beautiful, and Hebeny, meaning Ebony, likely described how a dog looked. Other names described what a dog did, such as Meniupu, meaning He is a shepherd. Some names described character or luck, such as Seneb, meaning Healthy, or the blunt Adjawetet, meaning Useless. Collar inscriptions elsewhere record names such as Brave One, Northwind, and Reliable.

Translating these names for your dog is not always straightforward. Egyptian used two common words for dog, tsm and iw, and a separate word, iwiw, that imitated a dog's bark. Foreign dogs sometimes had their names written phonetically alongside an Egyptian translation, as with three of Intef II's dogs, whose names Behekay, Abaqer, and Pehetez were glossed as gazelle, greyhound, and black.

Part 2

Real recorded names from ancient sources

The stela names three of his dogs: Behekay, translated as gazelle, Abaqer, translated as greyhound, and Pehetez, whose Egyptian name Kemu meant black. A separate stone tablet found near the Great Pyramid at Giza names a royal guard dog called Abutiu, one of the earliest documented dogs whose name survives.

• Nefer, meaning Beautiful, likely described a dog's looks.
• Hebeny, meaning Ebony, may also have referred to appearance.
• Meniupu, meaning He is a shepherd, described a working role.
• Seneb meant Healthy.
• Adjawetet meant something like Useless.

The tablet naming Abutiu calls him directly the dog which was the guard of His Majesty before giving his name.

Part 3

Why the Egyptians named dogs this way

You can understand why the Egyptians bothered to name their dogs individually once you see how much dogs did for them. Dogs worked as hunting partners from the Old Kingdom onward and continued to accompany royal and non-royal Egyptians on hunts through the New Kingdom. A relief even shows a hunting dog accompanying King Tutankhamun on an ostrich hunt.

Dogs were also tied to religious belief through Anubis, the jackal-headed god linked to burial and the afterlife. That link partly grew from the habit of desert jackals scavenging near early graves.

Even pharaohs kept dogs as pets. A fragmentary stela of Intef II shows him with three of his dogs standing before him. A dog's collar also carried legal weight, since killing a collared dog with a clear owner could carry severe punishment.

Part 4

Modern names inspired by ancient Egypt

If you want a name for your dog inspired by ancient Egypt, you have real names, gods, and places to draw from. Places tied to Egyptian history, such as Giza or Thebes, also work as names.

You could also use one of the names historians have actually recorded for a real ancient dog. Nefer, Hebeny, Seneb, and Abaqer all belonged to real dogs in ancient Egypt. Their translated meanings, such as Beautiful, Ebony, Healthy, and Greyhound, work well as English names too.

• Choose a name that is short enough to call across a yard.
• Pick a name you can pronounce comfortably, even if it is inspired by an ancient Egyptian word.
• Say the name out loud a few times before you commit, the way you would test any name for your dog.

Part 5

How this connects to dogs in ancient Egypt more broadly

Naming was only one part of how Egyptians related to their dogs. Sighthounds and other dog types were used for hunting and depicted throughout Egyptian history.