I wrote this last year but thought it worth sharing again now. Hopefully it is of interest, or at least serves as food for thought.
The following is a short excursion into the name ‘Thoth’, who is a god from the Ancient Egyptian pantheon, one relating to communication, commerce, and the written word, credited as having invented the latter – Think of the Greek Hermes or Roman Mercury and you have the same archetype, near enough.
A couple of years ago I heard an alchemist by the name of Fortune de Saint Germaine pronounce the name ‘Thoth’ as “ta-ho-tey”. He explained that this was closer to the original pronunciation, as most English-speaking people pronounce it “toth” or literally as written “thoth”. I wondered at this but never followed-up on it until I purchased a copy of The Eloquent Peasant, translated by Loren R. Fisher. The aforementioned is considered an Ancient Egyptian novel, though it is rather short, so I’d say novella or even short story. The preface to the book contains the following: ‘Who was Dhwty? The Greeks called him Thoth.’ This unusual rendering, ‘Dhwty’, immediately appeared to represent something along the lines of “ta-ho-tey”, given my knowledge that Egyptian hieroglyphics were translated via Greek, and also for my knowledge of the Greek alphabet and its pronunciation. ‘Dhwty’ rendered into the Greek alphabet would look like this: ‘Δηωτυ’, which is pronounced (in Greek) “thee-oh-tee” - the Greek letter ‘Δ/δ’ is pronounced as the voiced ‘th’ in English ‘the’, rather than unvoiced/flat in English ‘think’, and is also interchangeable across European languages with the letters ‘T/t’, ‘D/d’, ‘Th/th’, the Welsh ‘Dd/dd’, and the Norse ‘Ð/ð’.
It then occurred to me that Greek and Latin texts have largely been used in ferrying information from the ancient world to the modern reader, and so I also speculate that ‘Thoth’ and ‘Dhwty’ are the exact same word rendered differently into English via Greek or Latin. If I explain the interchangeable letters/sounds, you will see what I mean.
The Greek letter ‘Η/η’ is pronounced “ee”, as is the Greek letter ‘Υ/υ’ (from Δηωτυ / Dhwty), making them phonetically interchangeable. So the name ‘Thoth’ rendered into Greek would look like this: ΤΗΩΤΗ (Τηωτη), pronounced “tee-oh-tee”. In English we use the letter ‘H’ for another sound altogether, so it is easy to see how the name ‘ΤΗΩΤΗ/Τηωτη’ could easily have been rendered into English via the written-word as ‘Thoth’, albeit mispronounced “toth”, while also being rendered into English via the spoken-word as “tee-oh-tee / dee-oh-tee / thee-oh-tee”; which of course is very similar to Fortune de Saint Germaine’s “ta-ho-tey” and Loren R. Fisher’s ‘Dhwty’ (with ‘t’, ‘d’, and ‘th’ also being interchangeable, as earlier mentioned).
It occurs to me also that the root “tee-oh / dee-oh / thee-oh”, due to the interchangeable initial, is phonetically related to the words ‘Dio’, ‘Dia’, ‘Theo’, and ‘Thea’, which are used in Latin-based languages, and Gaelic languages, as the word for ‘God’. This is where in English we get the root of the word ‘Theology’, which is the study of the nature of God and religious belief.
I’ve condensed the above phonetic exploration into the following:
(English) ‘Dhwty’ / “ta-ho-tey” - “thee-oh-tee” - ΔΗΩΤΥ / δηωτυ (Greek)
(Greek) ΤΗΩΤΗ / Τηωτη - “tee-oh-tee” - ‘Thoth’ / “toth” (English)
Here I will include the foreign-to-English letters and their respective sound, so to make the above a little easier to decipher (I did my best):
Greek
Δ/δ - voiced “th”, as in ‘the’ and not ‘think’.
Η/η - “ee”, as in ‘see’.
Ω/ω - “oh”, as in ‘go’.
Τ/τ - “t”, as in ‘to’.
Υ/υ - “ee”, as in ‘see’.
Welsh
Dd/dd - voiced “th”, as in ‘the’ and not ‘think’.
Norse
Ð/ð - voiced “th”, as in ‘the’ and not ‘think’.
