mjw

Most likely onomatopoeic, from the animal’s cry (meow). Compare Chinese 貓 (māo), Lao ແມວ (mǣu).

Other hypotheses connect it to Proto-Afro-Asiatic *m-r or *m-l, the former on the basis of Alagwa mariy-amo (“wild cat”), Lamé Ngete mēr (“serval”) and méríán (“wild cat”), Pévé merian (“wild cat, serval”), Zime-Dari Pévé mīēr (“genette”), and the latter on the basis of Musgu ámíl (“African civet”), Bedanga Sokoro melā (“cat”). Either one of these could also be plausibly connected with the ancestor of Egyptian mꜣj (“lion”).

• (reconstructed Old Egyptian) IPA^(key): /mi(ʀ)juw/

• (modern Egyptological) IPA^(key): /miuː/
  • Conventional anglicization: miu

 m

1. (male) cat; tomcat
   • c. 332-30 BCE,, Book of the Dead of Iuefankh, chapter 17, lines 45-46 (pTurin Museo Egizio 1791):

     
     

     jnk mjw pfy ꜥꜣ ntj ḥr p(s)št jšd r-gs.f m jwnw grḥ pfy n(j) ꜥḥꜣ-ꜥ(w) jrt zꜣw(t) sbjw
     hrw pfy n(j) ḥtmt ḫftjw nw nb-(r)-ḏr jm.f

     I am that great tomcat beside whom the desert date tree was split in Heliopolis on that night of battle and the guarding of rebels,
     on that day on which the enemies of the Lord of All were destroyed.

• mjwt (“female cat”)

• Demotic: mj, jmj
  • Coptic: ⲉⲙⲟⲩ (emou) (Sahidic, Bohairic, Fayyumic), ⲁⲙⲟⲩ (amou) (Sahidic)

From mj (“like”) +‎ -w.

• (modern Egyptological) IPA^(key): /miuː/
  • Conventional anglicization: miu

 m

1. likeness

• mjwj

• Takács, Gábor (2007), “mj.w & mj.t”, in Etymological Dictionary of Egyptian, volume 3, Leiden: Brill, →ISBN, page 134
• James P[eter] Allen (2010) Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs, 2nd edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 376.