This is a repost:

What you all seem to be overlooking is that The Mummy (starring Brendon Fraser 1999) is the second remake of the original Universal Studios 1932 movie The Mummy starring Boris Karloff. The first remake of this movie was Hammer Films 1957 version starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.

Back in 1932 the history of AE was not nearly as popular as it is today. Yes the discovery of Tut's tomb sent a big Egypt craze and fad around the world but not much history was known by the general public before this. So when those at Universal Studios sought to make a horror film about a mummy that returns from the dead they chose some ancient Egyptian names of historical figures, or at least some that sounded similar to actual historical figures(Imhotep, Ankhsanamun [Ankhesenamun]), but not their actual history!

Of course when Hammer Films did the remake in 1957 it wouldn't have been right not to keep the same names of two of the main characters. Another funny thing about the Hammer Films remake is when they show a scene from Imhotep's tomb,the archaeologist finds a small wooden box in the shape of a cartouche that contains the papryrus scroll in which he reads aloud the hieroglyphs and awakens Imhotep. Anyhow the name on the cartouche shaped box is that of none other than Tutankamun!

So in 1999 The most recent remake of the movie was released. Although the producers took some liberties in changing around the plot quite a bit, the main storyline of Imhotep and Ankhsanamun remained.

So the producers and writers of the 1999 version did not select the names of the chracters but instead they were selcted 67 years earlier by the writers/producers of the original Universal Films movie.