Isis

Origin of the name

 

Isis
in hieroglyphs
 
 
 
The English pronunciation used for this deity, /ˈaɪ.sɪs/), is an anglicized pronunciation of the Greek name, Ίσις, which itself changed the original Egyptian name by the addition of a final -s because of the grammatical requirements of Greek noun endings.

The Egyptian name was recorded as ỉs.t or ȝs.t and meant '(She of the) Throne'. However the true Egyptian pronunciation remains uncertain because their writing system omitted vowels. Based on recent studies which present us with approximations based on contemporary languages and Coptic evidence, the reconstructed pronunciation of her name is *ʔŪsat (ooh-saht). Later, the name survived into Coptic dialects as Ēse or Ēsi, as well as in compound words surviving in names of later people like Har-si-Ese, literally "Horus, son of Isis".

For convenience and arbitrarily, Egyptologists choose to pronounce the word as ee-set. Sometimes they may also say ee-sa because the final 't' in her name was a feminine suffix which is known to have been dropped in speech during the last stages of the Egyptian language.