they should make a slasher revenge movie about a cool af hitman played by ryan gosling but this time the contract killer is hired by fandoms to go after bad plastic surgeons that botched their fave with hee-hee style rhinos or buccal fat removal and the hitman replicates the terrible surgery on the doctor
Yu-Gi-Oh doesn’t stick very strictly to historical accuracy in terms of ancient Egyptian culture, and that very much is reflected in the names of its ancient Egyptian characters. But I like to at least try to be accurate about this kind of thing, so let’s think about this for a bit.
(Please note I’m not an Egyptologist. I’m just trying my best with what I’ve got here.)
Starting with the not-actually-ancient-Egyptian-but-in-an-ancient-Egyptian-cult characters:
Ishizu
Ishizu’s pretty simple. “Ishizu” is a close transliteration of “Isis” into Japanese phonetics. “Isis” in Egyptian is commonly transliterated as Iset, Aset, or sometimes Eset (with direct phonetic transliteration being As.t). Unsure if it would be more accurate for her to use “Isis” or “Iset” in the cult circumstance, though.
Marik
I think people like to argue about Marik’s name more for some reason? But uh. All things considered it’s probably intended to be the Arabic name “Malik”. This is a little weird for a mostly isolated cult originating back 3,000 years in ancient Egypt, but with there being people potentially brought in over time (like Rishid) and women going out and interacting with an Arabic-speaking population, it’s definitely not impossible. Just weird for the guy who has to get his back ritually engraved.
There are a couple of ancient Egyptian names that’re fairly similar to his, though: Mereru(i)ka (mrr.wj-kA) and Meryka (mr.jj-kA). Both approximately mean “beloved by my ka”.
Rishid
I don’t have much to say about him. He’s adopted. “Rishid” isn’t a common name, like…anywhere, though, so “Rashid” is the obvious more common name for him. “Rashid” is actually a transliteration of two names (slightly different pronunciations: Rāshid and Rashīd), which both mean “rightly guided”, “having the true faith”, or “the high one”.
(And by “Rishid isn’t a common name” I mean there are 34 instances worldwide and none of them are in Egypt. “Rashid”’s in the 3,000s in Egypt though!)
Shadi
Shadi’s got a similar deal to Marik. “Shadi” is an Arabic name, no trouble with transliteration or anything. Plenty common of a name in Egypt with over 10,000 instances. Means “singer” in Arabic. Still maybe a bit weird with the ancient cult.
Like Marik, there are also a couple of names similar to “Shadi”: Shaty (SAtjj) and Shedy (Sd.jj).
Now for the actual ancient Egyptian characters.
Atem
Okay, we know this guy. He’s got the same name as the god Atum, which has the pronunciation variations of Atem (jtm), Atemu (jtmw), Tem (tm), and Temu (tmw).
Akhenaden
Akhenaden is pretty obviously named after the Pharaoh Akhenaten, the one who renounced the Egyptian pantheon and tried to make the Aten the only god. Akhenaten’s name (AH-n-jtn) means “beneficial for the Aten”.
Now, we could just take the name “Akhenaten” and call that good, but the context of Atenism and that whole specific situation does make that a little weird.
We could also take the root, AH-n, which means beneficial for (something), and make that work. The closest word I could find to “aden”, “iden” (jdn), means “to replace/represent” or “to serve/act in place of someone” with the explicit connotation of “in government”, which is almost a bit too fitting. If we put them together that roughly gets us “beneficial for replacing someone in government”.
Which might not be an attested name but is a little bit funny.
Akhenamkhanon
Akhenamkhanon has the same root as Akhenaden, AH-n. To get a name with meaning we’d have to do something similar to Akhenaden.
Unfortunately “amkhanon” is a lot of potential word combinations for someone who doesn’t know Egyptian, so I can only really give some rough examples. “Am” (Am) can be the verb “to burn” or an epithet to the king as/or Horus. “Amu” (Amw) is the noun for “burning” or “flame”. “Khenen” (Hnn) means “to trouble/disturb” or “confound (about the truth)”. And if you want to fuck it up a bit more, “henen” (hnn) means “to load or burden something until it bends” or “put trust (in)”.
So putting those together gets you something like “beneficial for burning trust” or “beneficial for confounding the king/Horus”. Probably butchered to hell and back, though.
Siamun
Siamun is directly Siamun (sA-jmn), which means “son of Amun”.
Mana
Mana almost translates directly. Mana (mAnA) is a possible reading of mAn⸗j, which means “oh, would that I see”.
Mahaado/Mahad
Full disclosure, this guy’s name kind of scares me. I can’t find a satisfying equivalent and he’s one of the most important ancient Egyptian characters. Why must he be named this.
(Okay, he is named this for a reason. “Mahad” is an Arabic name which according to Yugipedia means “one who is great”, and the Japanese name “Mahaado” sounds like “magical wave” in Japanese, which is a pun because he’s a magician. Unfortunately his name being a pun in Japanese makes this more upsetting because it doesn’t really translate and that seems important, damnit.)
Anyway, regardless of my frustrations there are some names that get sort of close:
Amunhedu (jmn-hdw), which means “Amun is the attacker”
Mededu (mdd.w)
Medju (mDw)
Medjhu (mDH.w) which might mean “the carpenter”
Menhu (mnHw)
None of which are recognizably similar to “Mahad” or “Mahaado” unless you’re told, so this just kind of persists as a problem.
Seto
Seto’s got a lot of options. He’s named after the god Set, which makes things easy enough, at least until you realize that “Set” was likely pronounced closer to “Setekh”, and then you just have to make a choice on how intrusive you want to be about his name being different than canon.
If we take his name entirely literally, the direct translation would be Setekh (stH), or Sutekh (swtH). Though, since he has the “o” at the end, it might make more sense to assume it would be something like Setekhy (stH.jj) or Seti (stj or st.j; haven’t figured out what the period means yet).
Alternatively you could prioritize the “o”-ish sound and use Setau (stAw), though I’m not sure the Set connection is still there with that one.
Isis
Same as Ishizu. “As.t” translates literally into Isis, so the only complication is that it’s the same as Ishizu. If you decide to call Ishizu by the Egyptian transliteration of Isis, I’d recommend calling Ishizu “Iset” and Isis “Aset” because Isis has more of an “a” sound in Japanese.
Shada
“Shada” is an Arabic name meaning “scent”, “fragrant”, or “aroma”.
There aren’t really any names that sound closer to “Shada” than “Shadi” that I could find. Both Shaty (SAtjj) and Shedy (Sd.jj) could work with Shada as well.
For differentiation, I also looked into names that have the “a” sound at the beginning. Some of the closer ones there were “Ashau” (aSA.w) and “Ashakhet” (aSA-H.t), the latter which means “he with many things”. These aren’t nearly as close or recognizable, though.
Interestingly, “Shada” as an Arabic name seems to be predominantly feminine. I took that as an invitation to look at feminine ancient Egyptian names too, and there ended up being some more meaningful ones. “Ashatkau” (aSA.t-kA.w) and “Ashakau” (aSA-kA.w) mean “abundant of/are (my) kas”, which could connect to the Millennium Key’s ability to see kas, enter soul rooms, and change them—helping with the collection of kas, basically. There’s also “Ashat-s” (aSA.t⸗s), which doesn’t have a clear meaning.
Kalim
“Kalim” as an Arabic name means “speaker”.
Like Shada, it makes sense to connect his name to the concept of the ka because the Millennium Scales are so specifically involved with them. So, names relating to kas:
Ka-i-whem (kA⸗j-wHm) meaning “(my) ka is repeated”
Kames (kA-ms) which may also be read as Ka-i-mes (kA⸗j-ms)
Ka-i-m(e)ra (kA⸗j-m-ra) meaning “the Bull (ka) as Ra” (also sounds close to “chimera”, which is punny on the Scales fusing kas)
Ka-i-im-f (kA⸗j-jm⸗f) meaning “my ka is in him”
Ka-i-meny (kA⸗j-mn.jj) meaning “my ka is enduring”
(Might have transliterated those wrong. Not sure what to do when the pronoun is in the middle.)
Other similar names (that don’t have pronouns for me to mess up) are Kamy (kA-m.jj), Kamer (kA-mr), and Kamenib (kA-mn-jb).
Bakura
Bakura! Surprisingly not so out of place for being a Japanese name. I’ve seen people give their shot at translating “Bakura” flat-out, but none of the sources I was looking at came up with anything so direct. However, “Bakura” is very similar to the name “Bakara” or “Bakare” (bA-kA-ra), meaning “his ba/soul is the ka of Ra” or “glorious is the soul of Ra”.
Really, though, “Bakura” isn’t so strange compared to some of the other ancient Egyptian characters. It’s kind of impressive.
Anyway, I think that’s all of them. Not sure if this is helpful to anyone but me, but hopefully if you got this far you found it interesting!
(And if you know more about ancient Egypt than me, please correct me. I’m not an expert at all, just having fun feeling out how to write Yu-Gi-Oh with a little more historical accuracy.)
Anyways, I just don’t think I could be strictly one or the other. I need to have both, to be in control but also to trust my partner enough to let them be in control.
