The opening words of the Book of Mormon, "I, Nephi" (1 Nephi 1:1), raise an interesting issue: Was this name or others like it in use around Jerusalem in Lehi's day? In general one may ask: Are the "personal names contained in the story . . . satisfactory for that period and region"? While an answer to that issue for all names in the Book of Mormon awaits investigation, several suggestions have been made for the name Nephi.

Early in the Book of Mormon (1 Nephi 1:2), Nephi notes the connections between Egypt and Israel at his time. Three of the four etymologies proposed for the name Nephi are Egyptian; these are the Egyptian names Nfr "good," Nfw "captain," and Nfy "wind." We can rule out Nfy as a possibility since so far it has not been attested as a name in Egypt at any time period. Similar considerations also rule out the fourth proposed etymology deriving from Akkadian napāḫu, "smith," none of which are used as personal names. This leaves us with two suggestions: Nfr and Nfw. While it might appear that Nfr is disqualified for ending in an -r, by the time of Lehi (end of the seventh century B.C.), the final r had long since fallen out of pronunciation.

Although the consonants look different between the two names, in Lehi's day the only difference in pronunciation would have been in the vowels.

Unfortunately, neither Egyptians nor Hebrews wrote vowels in Lehi's day. But we can still get some ideas of how Nfr and Nfw were vocalized from foreign transcriptions of Egyptian names and from later versions of these words from times when Egyptians did write vowels (i.e., Coptic).

Transcriptions of the Coptic forms of Nfr and Nfw are noufi and neef respectively. In the fifth century B.C., the Egyptian name 'nḫ-ḥr-nfr is transcribed in Aramaic 'ḤRNPY, while Aramaic transcriptions of the Egyptian name K3-nfr.w are KNPY, QNPY, KNWP', and KNWPY. The transcriptions indicate that the vowel might be o or u, matching the initial vowel of the later Coptic noufi. The problem with this proposed etymology, however, is that K3-nfr.w is a stative verb form. In Egyptian, as in Semitic languages different verbal forms are indicated by a change in vowels. K3-nfr.w is a stative, whereas Nfr is probably a participle, and the vowel in the participle from Greek transcriptions seems to be an e, as opposed to the stative case vowels o or u. On the other hand, Assyrian scribes transcribed the names B3k-n-nfw as Bu-uk-ku-na-an-ni-i'-pi or Bu-uk-ku-na-an-ne-e'-pi. These transcriptions indicate that the vowel in Nfw was an e or i, matching the vowel in later Coptic. So the vowel matches better with Nfw than with Nfr.

The advantage that Nfr has over Nfw is that Nfr is actually attested at the right time, whereas Nfw is attested but not at the right time. As previously noted, Nfy nor forms of napāḫu are attested as names at any time. Thus, one may confidently conclude, whether from Nfr or Nfw, the name Nephi is an attested Egyptian name.