Red Sea goby and nape and there are 24–28 scales in lateral line. It grows to a maximum length of . The Red Sea goby was formerly endemic to the northern Red Sea but have invaded the Mediterranean Sea by Lessepsian migration through the Suez Canal, and is common in the Lake Bardawil and has been found off Israel and Lebanon. The species was described by Paul Chabanaud in 1933 from type specimens collected in Lake Timsah on the Suez Canal. The Red Sea goby can be found on sandy substrates in inshore, shallow waters where it feeds on harpacticoid copepods and nematodes,
Mediterranean Sea or Islamic sources. It may be to contrast with the Black Sea. In Persian, the name was translated as "Baḥr-i Safīd", which was also used in later Ottoman Turkish. It is probably the origin of the colloquial Greek Άσπρη Θάλασσα. Johann Knobloch claims that in Classical Antiquity, cultures in the Levant used colours to refer to the cardinal points: black referred to the north (explaining the name Black Sea), yellow or blue to east, red to south (i.e., the Red Sea), and "white" to west. This would explain both the Turkish "Akdeniz" (White Sea) and the Arab nomenclature described above.