Question: Please help with this name: Faith? What do you do about long A and TH? Is the A omitted? Would it be correct to omit short vowels in syllables? Would the name Cameron become KMRN? Hope you don't mind helping? Thanks in advance!

Marie: Vowels in hieroglyphic transliterations are a problem. Because the ancient Egyptians never wrote vowels until they had to write foreign names like Cleopatra, we do not know exactly the sounds they would have used. Unless we speak Greek, we do not really know how the vowels in Cleopatra are pronounced. Is it Cleopatra or Cleopartra? The same problem arises with the letter blends such as TH in English. Some Egyptologists read the TH as the cattle hobble which is a sound something like the English CH. This would not suit for Faith. It is not the right sound. Therefore you would have to write both symbols (the T and the H) separately. In the case of the long A sound in Faith: Some experts cite the forearm and hand sign as the long "a". However, this is for words like "mate" where the final silent "e" lengthens the "a". With no silent "e" the word would be "mat" with a short "a". In the name Faith, the long A is produced by the "ai" letter combination, so it does not fit in with this theory. So, to facilitate the correct pronounciation of the name Faith, you would need to write the whole word, using the forearm A and the reed I . KMRN is correct for Cameron. The acid test for judging whether it is correct is: can you read it back into the English form? In this case, you can.