nfr.f-rꜥ

Egyptian

Etymology

The reading and interpretation of this name are disputed. Depending on the presence or absence of honorific transposition, rꜥ may be read as either following or preceding nfr.f. Furthermore, it is unclear if the f in this name is to be read as a suffix pronoun .f (“he, his”) or simply a phonetic complement to the sign for nfr. Verner has proposed that the name was originally intended to be read as rꜥ-nfr (“Ra is beautiful”) but was soon misconstrued as rꜥ-nfr.f (“Ra, he is beautiful”). Leprohon accepts this idea of a later misconstrual but reads the name with rꜥ at the end, so that the king’s name does not focus on the sun god but rather on the king himself; he proposes an analysis following the sequence of nfr (“to be pleasing, fine, good”) +‎ .f (“he”) +‎ rꜥ (“Ra”), thus ‘he is perfect [= fine] (in the manner of) Ra’ (from an original form nfr-rꜥ (“the perfection of Ra”)).

Pronunciation

(modern Egyptological) IPA^(key): /nɛfɛrʔɛf rɑː/
- Conventional anglicization: nefer.ef-ra

Proper noun

m

A throne name notably borne by Neferefre, a pharaoh of the Fifth Dynasty

Alternative forms

Alternative hieroglyphic writings of nfr.f-rꜥ

rꜥ-nfr

References

“Nfr⸗f-Rꜥw (lemma ID 400642)”, in Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae‎^[1], Corpus issue 18, Web app version 2.1.5, Tonio Sebastian Richter & Daniel A. Werning by order of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften and Hans-Werner Fischer-Elfert & Peter Dils by order of the Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, 2004–26 July 2023
Leprohon, Ronald (2013) Denise Doxey, editor, The Great Name: Ancient Egyptian Royal Titulary, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, →ISBN, page 39
von Beckerath, Jürgen (1984) Handbuch der ägyptischen Königsnamen, München: Deutscher Kunstverlag, →ISBN, pages 55, 182
Verner, Miroslav (1985) “Un roi de la Ve dynastie. Rêneferef ou Rênefer ?” in Le Bulletin de l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale, volume 85, pages 281–284