kꜣkꜣj

Egyptian

Etymology

Unclear. Like many fifth-dynasty pharaohs’ birth names, this name may simply be a diminutive without any meaning of its own, perhaps of the pharaoh’s throne name nfr-jr-kꜣ-rꜥ (in which case it may not be the actual name given at birth). Alternatively, some have tentatively attempted to explain it as kꜣ (“life-force, sustenance”) +‎ kꜣ +‎ .j (“my”), thus ‘my life-force is a life-force’.

Pronunciation

• (modern Egyptological) IPA^(key): /kɑkɑi/
  • Conventional anglicization: kakai

Proper noun

 m

1. A given name of historical usage, notably borne by Neferirkare Kakai, a pharaoh of the Fifth Dynasty

References

• “Kꜣkꜣj (lemma ID 450027)”, in Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae‎^[1], Corpus issue 17, Web app version 2.01 edition, 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, 2004–15 December 2022
• 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 54, 181