Subject: A suggestion, then.
Author:
Posted on: 2014-09-12 19:40:00 UTC

Name her Something al-Rashid - Something of Rosetta - and give her a semi-mystical connection to the town. Maybe she's some form of destined guardian, or maybe it's just that she was born there and after so long, she's fond enough of it that she wants to keep it safe. Then grant her 'Rosetta' as a nickname - somewhat like referring to Arthur Wellesley as 'Wellington', the name of his duchy.

Alternately, keep the nickname as above, but give her... any other name you like. The Arabic name of the Sphinx literally means 'Father of Dread', so per Desdendelle, 'Um al-Haul' would be 'Mother of Dread'. But it's not a very nice name.

Aha. Per Anonymouse, you could have a surname 'sat Mafdet', 'daughter of Mafdet'. And for a brilliant punny first name... 'Khititi', 'Khito (= Rosetta) has come'.

Khititi Samafdet? That at least looks like a name. Since I'm not sure Egypt used surnames, Samafdet would be a descriptive title (a la 'Son of Horus' - so actually, this might be 'Samafdet Khititi'), and she could have adopted an Arabic 'al-Rashid' to go with it. If she's literally using that as pure convention, it would be entirely natural for her to give her name as 'Samafdet Khititi of Rosetta'... which would give you the 'Rose' nickname.

Or perhaps something even simpler: Rasheeda Khititi. Modern name, ancient name, massive redundancy, Rosetta reference, terrible cat pun. What's not to like?

hS

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