On October 14, 1997, HTMLScript’s name was changed to Miva Script and the company name was changed to Miva. Soon afterward, Miva Merchant followed suit for the name of the product. The name "Miva" comes from the Egyptian hieroglyphics for the word "cat". The word for cat is a combination of two symbols: milk basin followed by a quail. The milk basin is pronounced "mee" and the quail is pronounced "waa" which are combined to say cat. Joseph Austin thought this was clever, as they had called KoolKat “an electronic (cat)alog.” Joseph showed it to a German friend who could not pronounce the waa sound and instead kept on pronouncing it as "va". Joseph Austin registered the domain Miva.com and filed the trademark.