I don't want to defend Karl's Hyksos idea. But your alternative picture seems to be that the author of Exodus knew little about the real Egypt was writing from imagination about conditions there. That speculative position would have significant implications on the names - although possibly in either way: one might argue that an author ignorant of real Egyptian names would have given Hebrew names to Egyptian as well as Israelite characters; or that he or she would have given clearly foreign looking names (even if not real Egyptian ones) to non-Israelites and so the Israelite names imply that the midwives were Israelite.
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Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/
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