Etymo note: the glyph R and Rei, Rex , Ric , rich, Roye , Roy , Roi , Reg, Regular, Regn. , Reign, Reich , Raïs, Ra'is

Proto sinaitic may have had a considerable genealogic influence on proto-canaanite , whence phonoecian and its descendants come (nearly all non-logographic alphabets (as the wikipedia article, "Genealogy of scripts derived from Proto-Sinaitic", also notes.

There is a clear descendance from the hieroglyphic Ra's (head) representation of a head and the proto-sinaic glyph to the proto-canaanite then phonecian P pointing left, then the greek Rho with the glyph P .


the origin of this letter in proto-cananite and phoneician was rather pictorgrammic or ideographic , originally taken from a graphic refernce to "head" part of the human body. this relation persists through proto-sinaitic and to hieroglyphic where the pictogramm is derived.

as such the glyph's logogramic ancestor was a morpheme which semantic content got sublimated abstracted or removed while some graphic form was retained.

so it is ironic that the european term for the monarch , at least starting with latin
"rex" and "regula" would come to be represented with an initial R .

though it is difficult to look at Rex , Rei, ric and ra'is or ra's and not get ideas.

compounding this is that ra` and rais and ra's and the pictogram all originated in the same country, the antecedent in a direct line to the european alphabets.

compound this further with the persistence of the morpheme "ra's" head in semitic language such as arabic. though, here, in the semitic language the glyph is far from the P or R glyph.

On another strain , that is however more tenuous and speculative , the egyptian word Ra' denoting at least a sun god , if not a brahman-type or godhead deity , may have been at the origin of the transition to the latin Rex, a name which would also written with the letter Rho and glyph P which descends from the writing 'head' in proto sinaitic.

This is only one reason to surmise an afro-asiatic origin to the latin Rex .

Another reason could be the glyphic link itself.