Is the Ancient Egyptian word for cat, "Mau", inspired by their meow?

by Unicornzzz2
Bentresh

This would've been a good candidate for the "Short Answers to Simple Questions" thread since there is not much to say on the topic, but yes. In the Etymological Dictionary of Egyptian (Vol. 3 p. 134), Gábor Takács notes that the word is "purely onomatopoetic" and there is "thus no reason to search for Afro-Asiatic cognates."

Egyptian had several other animal words that were onomatopoeias, such as 'A ("donkey"), similar to our "hee-haw" donkey sound.