AWAD for Thu 2003-01-23 00:21 says "pharaoh" comes from [ancient] Egyptian "pr"="house" + "o"="great". However, according to Egyptian Grammar by Gardiner, this is way off the beam. "pr" means "great" and "h'h" (that's a glottal stop in the middle) means "house". Hieroglyphics doesn't represent vowels. The glottal stop is customarily represented by "a". I'm sorry I can't post the beautiful hieroglyphs for those words here. The Egyptian "pr" is the same word as the "bar" in "bar mitzvah".

Dear RinDavis: thanks for your contribution. I hope Wordsmith provides more topics about
Egypt so you can further enlighten us.

The bar in bar mitzvah means son. AHD4 traces it back to the common Semitic root *bn, also meaning son. Are they wrong? Seems like quite a jump from an Afro-Asiatic great to a Semitic son.

I checked. You are right. I am the one who was off the beam.