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Source:Echoes:Ch12:20:Nephi (as name)
Egyptian Name: Nephi
Egyptian Name: Nephi
In his study Personal Names in the Phoenician and Punic Inscriptions, Frank Benz cites a Phoenician name, KNPY, found at Elephantine, in Upper Egypt. Benz sees the name as a Canaanite form of the Egyptian personal name K-nfr.w.21 In Phoenician, a Semitic language closely related to Hebrew, the medial P in NPY would be pronounced /f/, making the name essentially congruent with the name Nephi. In addition, in the late Egyptian period (approximately 1000–300 BC) the r in the personal name nfr was pronounced /y/ ("ee"), again recalling the name Nephi. (In Coptic, the successor language to late Egyptian, nfr was rendered noufi, pronounced "noo-fee").22 The name Nephi is thus "an attested Syro-Palestinian Semitic form of an attested Egyptian man's name dating from the Late Period of Egypt."[1]
Notes
- Jump up ↑ Stephen D. Ricks, "Converging Paths: Language and Cultural Notes on the Ancient Near Eastern Background of the Book of Mormon," in Echoes and Evidences of the Book of Mormon, edited by Donald W. Parry, Daniel C. Peterson, and John W. Welch (Provo, Utah: FARMS, 2002), Chapter 12, references silently removed—consult original for citations.