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Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声): semantic 亻 (“person”) + phonetic 門 (OC *mɯːn).

First attested in the Song dynasty (Lü, 1940). Various other glyphs representing *mVn have been attested in Song dynasty texts, including 懣, 滿, 瞞, 門.

It is probably related to 弭 (MC mjieX) (in 我弭) and 偉 (MC hjw+jX) (in 兒郎偉 /儿郎伟 (érláng wěi)) attested in the Tang dynasty (Lü, 1940); it is related to 每 (měi), as in 我每 (wǒměi), common during the Jin (Jurchen), Yuan and early Ming dynasties (Lü, 1985).

Proposed etymologies:

* From the personal pronoun plural marker 輩 (OC *puːls) (Lü, 1985; Feng, 1997; Li, 2013).

* From 門 (MC mwon, “door; clan; family”) (Ota, 2003; Yu, 1989; Li and Shi, 2000).

* From 每人 (MC mwojX nyin, “everybody”) (Norman, 1988); compare Eastern Min 各儂／各侬 (“everybody”), used in 我各儂／我各侬 (“we; us”), 汝各儂／汝各侬 (“you (plural)”), 伊各儂／伊各侬 (“they”).

* From 物 (MC mjut, “thing”) (Jiang, 1995).

* From plural features in Dravidian languages, cf. Classical Tamil -m, -mar, -mār suffixes, Tamil நாம் (nām, “inclusive we”), via Indic languages by means of Buddhist transmission (Chen & Ye, 2020).

Also compare 您.