The word Jehovah originates from the Hebrew Tetragrammaton, YHWH (יהוה), the four-letter name of God in the Hebrew Bible, considered sacred by Jews. This name, often called the “ineffable name,”( Ineffable: too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words) was rarely pronounced aloud due to its holiness; instead, Jews typically used substitutes like “Adonai” (Lord) when reading scriptures.
The form “Jehovah” emerged in medieval Christian scholarship when scribes combined the consonants of YHWH with the vowel markings of Adonai. Hebrew texts used a system called niqqud to indicate vowels, and to remind readers to say “Adonai” instead of YHWH, the vowels of “Adonai” (roughly a-o-a) were added to the Tetragrammaton. This resulted in a hybrid form, YaHoWaH, which was transliterated into Latin as Iehovah or Jehovah by Christian scholars, particularly in the Middle Ages.
The earliest known use of “Jehovah” in this form is attributed to Christian theologians, such as Raymond Martin in the 13th century, with wider use in the Renaissance and Reformation periods. William Tyndale’s 1530 English Bible translation helped popularize “Jehovah” in English, and it appeared in later translations like the King James Bible (1611) in select passages (e.g., Exodus 6:3, Psalm 83:18).
However, modern scholars consider “Jehovah” a mispronunciation, as it doesn’t reflect the original Hebrew pronunciation of YHWH, which is uncertain but often approximated as Yahweh based on ancient sources like Greek transcriptions and theophoric names (e.g., Elijah, from Eliyahu, meaning “my God is Yah”). The exact pronunciation was lost because Jewish tradition avoided vocalizing the name, and Hebrew script lacked vowels until medieval times.
In summary, “Jehovah” is a historical artifact from combining YHWH’s consonants with Adonai’s vowels, used primarily in Christian contexts, but it’s not the original pronunciation of God’s name in the Hebrew Bible.
