Coptic Transliteration

Support for Coptic in Pleiades names has been requested. The following transliteration scheme has been proposed by Pleiades senior editor Roger Bagnall (after consulting the original Atlas project directions to compilers and also the standard used by the Coptic Encyclopedia):

Since most of Coptic is Greek letters, and we already have a standard there, we should follow that for the Greek letters in Coptic. For the rest, i.e., the Coptic supplemental letters. I would propose

  • shai:sh
  • fai: f
  • hori: h
  • janja: j
  • qima: q
  • ti: ti
  • and the Bohairic-only guttural letter: kh

Questions

The following questions arise from a review of the Unicode Coptic support. It is documented in two Unicode code charts:

1. The Unicode spec spells the letter names differently, but I've identified all of Roger's "Coptic supplemental letters" as follows. Do these equivalences seem right to you?

  • the Bohairic-only guttural letter = ????? (help? but see no. 4. below)

2. Should we allow in names and transliterate the following characters (or character variants?), not addressed in Roger's proposed system? If so, how?

a. Coptic sou; images:

b. Coptic sampi; images:

c. Coptic crossed shei; images:

3. Should we allow in names and transliterate the following variants of characters in the main Coptic subrange and if so, how?

a. ain (no form with this name in the "from demotic" or "bohairic" lists; not addressed in RSB's transliteration proposal)

b. oou (there is a form with this name in the "bohairic" list, which is addressed in RSB's transliteration proposal by virtue of equivalence with Greek omega)

c. shei (there is a form with this name in the "from demotic" list, which is addressed in RSB's transliteration proposal, sub "shai")

d. esh (no form with this name in the "from demotic" or "bohairic" lists; not addressed in RSB's transliteration proposal)

e. hori (there is a form with this name in the "from demotic" list, which is addressed in RSB's transliteration proposal, sub "hori")

f. ha (no form with this name in the "from demotic" or "bohairic" lists; not addressed in RSB's transliteration proposal)

g. hei (no form with this name in the "from demotic" or "bohairic" lists; not addressed in RSB's transliteration proposal)

h. hat (no form with this name in the "from demotic" or "bohairic" lists; not addressed in RSB's transliteration proposal)

i. gangia (there is a form with this name in the "from demotic" list, which is addressed in RSB's transliteration proposal, sub "janja")

j. dja (no form with this name in the "from demotic" or "bohairic" lists; not addressed in RSB's transliteration proposal)

k. shima (there is a form with this name in the "from demotic" list, which is addressed in RSB's transliteration proposal, sub "qima")

l. alef (no form with this name in the "from demotic" or "bohairic" lists; not addressed in RSB's transliteration proposal)

m. kapa (there is a form with this name in the "bohairic" list, which is addressed in RSB's transliteration proposal by virtue of equivalence with Greek kappa)

n. ni (there is a form with this name in the "bohairic" list, which is addressed in RSB's transliteration proposal by virtue of equivalence with Greek nu)

o. khei (there is a form with this name in the "from demotic" list, but it is not addressed in RSB's transliteration proposal)

p. ngi (no form with this name in the "from demotic" or "bohairic" lists; not addressed in RSB's transliteration proposal)

q. nyi (no form with this name in the "from demotic" or "bohairic" lists; not addressed in RSB's transliteration proposal)

r. wau (no form with this name in the "from demotic" or "bohairic" lists; not addressed in RSB's transliteration proposal)

s. eie (no form with this name in the "from demotic" or "bohairic" lists; not addressed in RSB's transliteration proposal)

4. We also need to deal with unaddressed character that's in the "from demotic" list