The word egypt in all languages

Hello!

I wonder what’s Egypt called in different languages.

In Indonesian it is called Mesir. Not similar at all to Egypt.

In German it’s Ägypten.

Thank you!

MarK

In European Portuguese: Egipto; in Brazilian Portuguese: Egito. It’s only a matter of spelling, since they sound pretty much the same in both varieties.

Jazyk

East vs. West thing here; it will be interesting to see if there are any exceptions (maybe in Japanese/Korean/Chinese languages?)…

My contributions on the east side:
Hebrew: mitzrayim
Hindi: misr

I am sure the Japanese/Korean/Chinese have something other than the easterns Mesir/misr etc. since it is about the Arabian influence.

Japanese: Ejiputo
Chinese: Aiji

Hi~ ^_^ ♥ In Korean language, we call Egypt, ‘이집트’, and

we say it same as English word ‘Egypt’. we call this word(이집트)

ee-jip-t.

thank you very much~♡ ^_^

여러분~ 감사합니다! (everyone! thank you!)

Here is Egypt in Devanagari. Definitely didn’t know the word before, Albondiga! Thanks for the heads up!

मिस्त्र
Edit: Upon second glance, Shabdkosh.com seems to disagree with your transliteration. Where did you find that spelling?

Took me a short while to track it down, since it’s not a source I actually ever used much, but here it is… Unfortunately, no Devanagari (probably why I never used the site much; I couldn’t trust it with only a transliteration!) Anyway, their transliterated spelling includes the «a» for the final consonant, but the audio pronunciation sounds like it’s left out as usual, and that’s how it stuck in my head, misr (it probably stuck because of the connection to mitzrayim in Hebrew, which I knew then.)

In any case, despite the sources of these two versions, the one I wrote also just seems more right than Shabdkosh’s version. None of the other languages that took the Arabic word seem to have a «t» sound in their versions (the Hebrew «tz» is a single consonant, not a «t» and a «z», and nothing else from Azeri to Indonesian seems to have anything but «m» and «s» and «r»)… that’s not conclusive, though, so

The tie-breaker: I just checked Platt’s and they don’t have a separate entry for «Egypt» but they do have «Egyptian» as «miṣrī (rel. n. fr. miṣr)» without the «t» sound either. I won’t go back and edit my post from «misr» to «miṣr», but this seems right… the question is where Shabdkosh got the «t» from… presumably either (a) it has somehow snuck in to some Hindi dialects or (b) it’s an error on their site.

Side note: for «Egyptian», compare Platt’s and my first source, («misrii» and «miṣrī» respectively) with Shabdkosh, which takes the easy way out («mistra kā»/»mistra nivāsī»)…

panjabigator said:

Here is Egypt in Devanagari. मिस्त्र

Sorry, panjabigator, the one that I regard as pretty canonical, i.e. R.S. McGregor: Hindi-English Dictionary, has मिसर misr for Egypt.

It’s admittedly a problem (although IMO minor) that for example Dr. Bulcke: An English-Hindi Dictionary writes Egypt: मिस्त्र mistra. But any and all Urdu dictionary will give you مصر miSr like in Arabic.

According to Wikipedia, the Egyptian word for Egypt is km.t, and in Egyptian Arabic it’s: Máṣr

In Coptic it’s: Kīmi, and in Arabic it’s called مصر Miṣr.

We run into several transcription/font problems here, among other issues. For the second consonant of مصر , I prefer S when I can’t use the underdotted ‘s’, but many systems/traditions for transcribing/pronouncing Hebrew employ ‘ts’. On my screen, I see an empty square following the ‘i’ of Miṣr. Copying the word into Word I see the underdotted ‘s’, but not in any standard font.

It would be immensely interesting, at least to me, to know when and where ‘miSr’ is first found. Ancient Egyptian wrote, as MarX mentioned, km.t. There has been a lot of noise on supposed findings of ancient written words for «Hebrew», «David» and similar, but to my current knowledge, the origins of miSr seem to be neglected.

While I’m at it, at the risk of a derail, I have spent hours searching the Internet and pestering professors of Semitic languages to find out the origin/first mentioning of the name of the River Nile. I think there might be a connection between the ubiquitous ancient as well as modern Indian word for ‘blue’, nila, and the river.

To add another dimension of possible confusion, my theory is that the form of Hebrew MiSrayim (grammatically dual number) refers to the union of Upper and Lower Egypt.

I am sure the Japanese/Korean/Chinese have something other than the easterns Mesir/misr etc. since it is about the Arabian influence.

Yes, you’re right.
Japanese/Korean/Chinese use transliteration of western Egypt etc.
CN: 埃及(aiji)
JP: エジプト(ejiputo)
KR: 이집트(ijiptu)

I’m not sure about the ending -om, though, as no other languages seem to have it. It may come from the declined Latin form «Aegyptium».

Maybe it’s from a Slavic language, from the instrumental ending -om.

for example:
Slovak:
Egypt
instrumental — Egyptom

It’s admittedly a problem (although IMO minor) that for example Dr. Bulcke: An English-Hindi Dictionary writes Egypt: मिस्त्र mistra.

Bulcke’s dictionary has मिस्र misr for Egypt and मिस्री misrii for Egyptian. No «t».

Египет in Russian.

Latvian: Ēģipte

Estonian: Egiptus.

Ukrainian: єгипет
(yehypet)

Ukrainian: Єгипет

Greek:

«Αίγυπτος» [ˈeʝiptos] (fem.) < Classical Gr. toponym «Αἴγυπτος» Αí̯guptŏs (fem.)

Also «Μισίρι» [mi’siri], but very rarely and mainly attested in Greek poets/authors who came from Egypt, like Kavafis.

Το ωχρόν μας Μισίρι
με βέλη ο ήλιος πλήρη
πικρίας και πείσματος καίει και δέρει,

Κ.Π. Καβάφης — Ποιήματα — Αποκηρυγμένα

Yes, you can read the second part of my previous post…

Ok, but you still hadn’t edited it by then.