Names

The English name Egypt is derived from the ancient Greek Aígyptos (Αἴγυπτος), via Middle French Egypte and Latin Aegyptus. It is reflected in early Greek Linear B tablets as a-ku-pi-ti-yo. The adjective aigýpti-, aigýptios was borrowed into Coptic as gyptios, and from there into Arabic as qubṭī, back formed into قبط qubṭ, whence English Copt. The Greek forms were borrowed from Late Egyptian (Amarna) Hikuptah "Memphis", a corruption of the earlier Egyptian name Hwt-ka-Ptah (ḥwt-k-ptḥ), meaning "home of the ka (soul) of Ptah", the name of a temple to the god Ptah at Memphis. Strabo attributed the word to a folk etymology in which Aígyptos (Αἴγυπτος) evolved as a compound from Aigaiou huptiōs (Aἰγαίου ὑπτίως), meaning "below the Aegean".

Miṣr (IPA: ) is the Literary Arabic and modern official name of Egypt, while Maṣr (IPA: ) is the common pronunciation in Egyptian Arabic. The name is of Semitic origin, directly cognate with other Semitic words for Egypt such as the Hebrew מִצְרַיִם (Mitzráyim), literally meaning "the two straits" (a reference to the dynastic separation of upper and lower Egypt). The word originally connoted "metropolis" or "civilization" and means "country", or "frontier-land".

The ancient Egyptian name of the country is <km.t> ⟨𓆎𓅓𓏏𓊖⟩, which means "black land", referring to the fertile black soils of the Nile flood plains, distinct from the deshret (dšṛt), or "red land" of the desert. This name is commonly vocalized as Kemet, but was probably pronounced /ku:mat/ in ancient Egyptian. The name is realized as kēme and kēmə in the Coptic stage of the Egyptian language, and appeared in early Greek as Χημία (Khēmía). Another name was tꜣ-mry "land of the riverbank". The names of Upper and Lower Egypt were Ta-Sheme'aw (tꜣ-šmꜥw) "sedgeland" and Ta-Mehew (tꜣ mḥw) "northland", respectively.