Tin Nyanko: The Beckoning Cat

That is not accurate.  Mau may mean cat in Eklektu, but even the Egyptologists cannot say for sure that mau meant cat in the ancient Egyptian language.

Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D. provides important information about the ancient Egyptian language in The Pronunciation of Ancient Egyptian:

The emphasis is mine.  When the ancient Egyptians wrote native Egyptian words using their writing systems (Hieroglyphic, Hieratic, and Demotic), they wrote only the consonants in those words.  So, since there are no more ancient Egyptians around today, how could we know if the a and the u were the actual vowels in the ancient Egyptian word that means cat?

I am sure that many fans will say, “My book on cats says that mau was indeed the ancient Egyptian word for cat” or “Many Web sites say that mau meant cat in ancient Egyptian.”  The problem is that they are fallaciously appealing to authority.  The authors of those books on cats are experts on cats, not experts on the ancient Egyptian language.  Moreover, one should be skeptical of information on Web sites because people rarely cite their sources.  Ms. Takeuchi might have thought that mau was the ancient Egyptian word for cat because that is a common misconception.

How would the French-speaking fans like it if somebody decided to say that egamorf was the French word for cheese simply because a book on cheeses said so?  What if that person tenaciously held on to that claim even when others showed him or her that the dictionaries say that fromage is the French word for cheese?  Would it not also sound ridiculous if somebody kept saying that mau was the ancient Egyptian word for cat even after others have shown that the ancient Egyptian dictionaries say otherwise?