The familiar name Moses is actually Moshe in Hebrew. The final -s in the English comes from the ancient Greek translation of the Bible known as the Septuagint: a terminal sigma was added because Greek does not permit masculine proper nouns to end in a vowel.
The Book of Exodus offers its own explanation of how Moses acquired his name. It’s a pun based on the circumstances of his discovery in a floating basket.
Three months after Moses was born, his mother placed him in a basket and hid him among the reeds along the Nile so that he would survive Pharaoh’s decree to murder all Hebrew baby boys. When Pharaoh’s daughter came to the river to bathe, she spied the baby and adopted him as her own. Moses’ sister, who had been stationed near the river to see what would happen, offered to find a wet nurse for the baby. She returned with Moses’ (and her) own mother.
"And the child grew," the Book of Exodus recounts, "and she [Moses’ mother, masquerading as a nursemaid] brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son; and she named him Moses (Hebrew, Moshe), for she said, ‘Because I drew him (meshitihu) out of the water’" (Exodus 2:10, Revised Standard Version).
There are many puzzling things about this statement, beginning with the identity of the woman who names the child. Most likely, "she" is the Egyptian princess, since she had adopted the child as her own and presumably would be the one to name him.1 Yet, it seems improbable that an Egyptian princess would be capable of making such a sophisticated pun in Hebrew, or, for that matter, that she would even give her foster child a Hebrew name.
In any case, let us assume that whoever named Moses knew Hebrew. How valid, then, does the Hebrew etymology seem? As an Egyptologist, I must here rely on the arguments of Hebrew scholars, who generally agree that it simply doesn’t make sense.2 The biblical etymology—which says the baby’s name is based on his having been drawn out of water—would lead one to expect a name that means "the one drawn out" or "he who was drawn"; that is, a passive form. But Moshe has an active participle behind it;3 the name means "the one who draws." (That’s why Isaiah calls him "the drawer" of his people [Isaiah 6:3].) The passive form would result in a name like Mashuy, not Moshe.
The Egyptian language provides a far more plausible etymology.4 The name Moses is related to common Egyptian names like Amenmose, Ramose and Thutmose,* which are formed of a god’s name followed by mose.5 These compound names mean something like "Amen is born" or "Born of Amen" or "The offspring of Ra" or "The child of Thoth." When the name Mose appears by itself, as it occasionally does in Egyptian, it simply means "the Child" or "the Offspring."6 But in Egyptian, Mose most frequently appears along with the name of a god as part of a compound name.
Most likely of all, the name Moses (assuming that he originally had a longer name) is short for Ramose, a popular name related to the name of the reigning pharaoh, Ramesses II.**—would also mean "Ra is born," but his name is normally written R‘-ms-sw (roughly, Ramessu) and means "Ra-fashioned him," using another meaning of the verb msi, that is, "to fashion, form." The two senses of the verb are related, however, in that Egyptians thought of the fashioning of a divine statue as equivalent to the god being born.) It was a common custom among the Egyptians to rename foreign slaves or captives after the pharaoh.
The technical term for a compound name with a divine element is a "theophoric" or "theophorous" name, derived from a Greek word meaning "bearing [derived from] a god."7
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