mark9950

Where did this word come from and its origins?

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The English word?

It is an erroneous English vocalization of the divine name as found in German, though the German would be pronounced yehofah, which in fact is a relatively good representation of the consonants in the divine name (for in Hebrew the name is only in consonants) and would have been better further back in time. So the English Jehovah is based indirectly on the divine name yhwh, found in some translations as yahweh.


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CX

It's an incorrect transliteration of The Tetragrammaton. The divine, 4-letter name of the Hebrew god. YHWH. Because of vagaries in transliteration, and especially because of the differences between German and English pronunciation, it was wrongly transliterated (in English) at some point as JHVH because the German "J" makes the same sound as the English "Y" and the German "V" makes the same sound as the English "W" (So in German it would be transliterated as JHVH). German figures prominently due to the historical significance of the study of the Bible in Germany. Most modern students and scholars transliterate The Tetragrammaton into English as "Yahweh".

Hazel-rah

There's also some phonological analogy, among English-speakers, with "Jove." Not etymologically related at all, but historically, when English-speakers think they've found similarities, those similarities tend to reinforce each other, hence the survival of the J and V sounds despite evidence to the contrary.