Etymological Relationship between Latin "Iove" and Hebrew "Yahweh"?

January 23, 2005 9:00 PM

Is there any etymological relationship between the non-nominative Latin forms of Jupiter [Iuppiter, Iovis], e.g. iove (which would be pronounced "yohweh"), and the Hebrew name for God, Yahweh?
posted by stopgap to Writing & Language (11 answers total)

It's quite the false friend, I think.

The Indo-European root dyeu- is the basis of many words for God in various languages, and connotes shining or youth. Older Latin forms had a D in the beginning which was dropped, e.g. Diespiter, enhancing the similarity, but this appears to be coincidental. (Interestingly, the root "survives" almost directly in modern French, but this is again somewhat coincidental.) See also Hindi deva and Shiva, which are related.

Jehovah comes from the Hebrew havah, or to be.
posted by dhartung at 9:19 PM on January 23, 2005

Minor correction:

Yahweh (Jehovah, etc) is not actually the Hebrew name for God; it is rather a transliteration of the letters Yod, Heh, Vav, Heh, which is the ineffable and unpronounceable name of God. It's usually written with the vowels for Adonai ("my Lord") interspersed with it, to prevent people from accidentally trying to pronounce the name.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 9:22 PM on January 23, 2005 [1 favorite]

What dhartung said. The Greek version of the Hebrew divine name has little relationship to Jove (iovis). The similarity appeared much later, after the questionable transliteration of Yahweh as "Jehovah."

A quick Google and a bit of sifting is all it took to find out the topic comes up regularly on the Ancient Near East mailing list. Find "Aayko Eyma" on this page (April 9, 1998); his post gets referenced on the list later as relatively definitive:

Perhaps your question was invoked by the late medieval form Jehova? - which however is based on wrong vocalisation. Note that the V in that form stems from Latin, expressing the W sound, not our modern V sound, and the J expressing the Y sound, not the modern English J. The Hebrew divine name YHWH, so with W, sounded like Yahweh. In Greek the name was transliterated _iaoue_ (Clement of Alexandria) or even _iabe_ (Theodoret); as in Greek, 'ou' or 'b' came closest to w, and they could not render the Hebrew H in the middle of words either. The short or poetic form of YHWH was Yahu, in Greek lettering transliterated as _iaO_.

So any resemblance between Yahweh/Yahu and Jove (iovis) is not really big.
posted by mediareport at 9:55 PM on January 23, 2005

My 2 cents:

The pronunciation "Yaweh" or "Yahveh" is just a guess. Since it was considered blasphemous to speak the name aloud, and since old Hebrew had no vowel markings, you just had this string of consonants: YHVH.

The connection with "havah" is an interesting one. It's primarily based on Exodus 3, when Moses askes for God's name and God replies, "Ehyeh asher ehyeh" (I Am that (which) I am). The root form of "Ehyah" is "havah", which sounds something like "Yahveh". So when God tells Moses to "Tell them Ehyah sent you", it could be read as a pun on the part of God, whose actual name was known to be "YHVH".

I'd be surprised if the Latin name had any relationship at all, as Latin is Indo-European in origin and Hebrew is Semitic, and the two language groups developed in relative isolation from one another.
posted by vraxoin at 10:35 PM on January 23, 2005

Thank you, dirtynumbangelboy, for setting the record stright.

The name of God in Judaism is a rather weird. The "word" Yahweh (????) is what's written in the Torah as God's name. But since it's "ineffable and unpronounceable", it's always pronounced "Adonai". In prayer books and such, the word Adonai is almost always spelled "??" (which is clearly not the way it "should" be spelled -- it's synonymous to pronouncing "lb" as "pound").

Where it gets weirder is when you listen to recordings of blessings and such that are intended for students to practice or learn. Some people have started considering the name "Adonai" to be holy in itself, and thus replace it with the word "hashem" (literally, "the name"). It's only a matter of time before that replacement replacement name is considered holy and is replaced itself.
posted by Plutor at 5:23 AM on January 24, 2005

Ugh, my unicode got munged.

"Yahweh": יהוה
"Adonai": יי
posted by Plutor at 5:24 AM on January 24, 2005

Yahweh (Jehovah, etc) is not actually the Hebrew name for God; it is rather a transliteration of the letters Yod, Heh, Vav, Heh, which is the ineffable and unpronounceable name of God. It's usually written with the vowels for Adonai ("my Lord") interspersed with it, to prevent people from accidentally trying to pronounce the name.

Wow, I didn't know that. Very Cool
posted by Shanachie at 11:35 AM on January 24, 2005

Part of the Judaic tradition says that God pronounced His own name, and thus the Universe began. And that is why there's no way to pronounce it.

Also, the Dogesh (to expand on vraxoln's point) weren't developed until much, much later. (The Dogesh being the system of adding small dots and lines in and around Hebrew letters to indicate vowel placement and pronunciation.)

For further info--I'm too out of it to properly compile links right now--I'd suggest Googling the terms 'tetragrammaton' (which is a Greek word describing the Holy Name), and 'pentagrammaton' (which is related, but with the addition of the letter Shin, thus, roughly, YHVShH, which is some fascinating stuff).
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 3:01 PM on January 24, 2005

Oh, sorry, or YHShVH... which one might notice bears a rather strong resemblance to Yeheshua, more commonly known as Jesus.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 5:53 PM on January 24, 2005

IIRC, Jupiter is from something like "Iu-pater," meaning "father Jove."

I also seem to remember that "Jove" and "Zeus" are etymologically related -- "Z" in Greek tends to correspond to "I" or "Y" in other Indo-European languages.

Alas, my Classics geek books are at home, so I can't verify any of this.
posted by nebulawindphone at 8:11 PM on January 24, 2005

God replies, "Ehyeh asher ehyeh" (I Am that (which) I am).

This must make Hebrew dubs of Popeye a real bitch.
posted by idontlikewords at 8:38 PM on January 24, 2005 [1 favorite]