The English word ''god'' comes from the

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

, which itself is derived from the

Proto-Germanic Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the linguistic reconstruction, reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic languages, Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. Proto-Germanic eventually developed from ...

. Its cognates in other

Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania, and Southern Africa. The most widely spoke ...

include (both Gothic), (

Old Norse Old Norse, also referred to as Old Nordic or Old Scandinavian, was a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants ...

), (

Old Saxon Old Saxon (), also known as Old Low German (), was a Germanic language and the earliest recorded form of Low German (spoken nowadays in Northern Germany, the northeastern Netherlands, southern Denmark, the Americas and parts of Eastern Eur ...

Old Frisian Old Frisian was a West Germanic language spoken between the late 13th century and the end of 16th century. It is the common ancestor of all the modern Frisian languages except for the North Frisian language#Insular North Frisian, Insular North ...

, and

Old Dutch In linguistics, Old Dutch ( Modern Dutch: ') or Old Low Franconian (Modern Dutch: ') is the set of dialects that evolved from Frankish spoken in the Low Countries during the Early Middle Ages, from around the 6th Page 55: "''Uit de zesde eeu ...

), and (

Old High German Old High German (OHG; ) is the earliest stage of the German language, conventionally identified as the period from around 500/750 to 1050. Rather than representing a single supra-regional form of German, Old High German encompasses the numerous ...

Etymology

The

meaning of and its etymology is uncertain. It is generally agreed that it derives from a

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Euro ...

neuter passive perfect participle '. Depending on which possibility is preferred, the pre-Christian meaning of the Germanic term may either have been (in the "pouring" case) "

libation A libation is a ritual pouring of a liquid as an Sacrifice, offering to a deity or spirit, or in Veneration of the dead, memory of the dead. It was common in many religions of Ancient history, antiquity and continues to be offered in cultures t ...

" or "that which is libated upon, idol" — or, as Watkins opines in the light of Greek "poured earth" meaning "

tumulus A tumulus (: tumuli) is a mound of Soil, earth and Rock (geology), stones raised over a grave or graves. Tumuli are also known as barrows, burial mounds, mounds, howes, or in Siberia and Central Asia as ''kurgans'', and may be found through ...

", "the Germanic form may have referred in the first instance to the spirit immanent in a burial mound" — or (in the "invoke" case) "invocation, prayer" (compare the meanings of Sanskrit ') or "that which is invoked." The term "Godan" was the name used for Wodan ( Odin ) amongst the pre-Christian Lombards which actually comes from

'. Wōdanaz or Wōđinaz is the reconstructed Proto-Germanic name of a god of

Germanic paganism Germanic paganism or Germanic religion refers to the traditional, culturally significant religion of the Germanic peoples. With a chronological dating, chronological range of at least one thousand years in an area covering Scandinavia, the Bri ...

, known as Odin in

Norse mythology Norse, Nordic, or Scandinavian mythology, is the body of myths belonging to the North Germanic peoples, stemming from Old Norse religion and continuing after the Christianization of Scandinavia as the Nordic folklore of the modern period. The ...

, Wōden in

, Wodan or Wotan in

and Godan in the Lombardic language. Godan was shortened to God over time and was adopted/retained by the Germanic peoples of the British isles as the name of their deity, in lieu of the Latin word Deus (adaptation of

Zeus Zeus (, ) is the chief deity of the List of Greek deities, Greek pantheon. He is a sky father, sky and thunder god in ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, who rules as king of the gods on Mount Olympus. Zeus is the child ...

) used by the Latin speaking Christian church, after conversion to Christianity. During the complex

christianization Christianization (or Christianisation) is a term for the specific type of change that occurs when someone or something has been or is being converted to Christianity. Christianization has, for the most part, spread through missions by individu ...

of the Germanic tribes of Europe, there were many linguistic influences upon the Christian missionaries. One example post downfall of the western Roman Empire are the missionaries from Rome led by Augustine of Canterbury. Augustine's mission to the Saxons in southern Britain was conducted at a time when the city of Rome was a part of a Lombardic kingdom. The translated Bibles which they brought on their mission were greatly influenced by the Germanic tribes they were in contact with, chief among them being the Lombards and

Franks file:Frankish arms.JPG, Aristocratic Frankish burial items from the Merovingian dynasty The Franks ( or ; ; ) were originally a group of Germanic peoples who lived near the Rhine river, Rhine-river military border of Germania Inferior, which wa ...

. The translation for the word ''deus'' of the Latin Bible was influenced by the then current usage by the tribes for their highest deity, namely ''Wodan'' by Angles, Saxons, and Franks of north-central and western Europe, and ''Godan'' by the Lombards of south-central Europe around Rome. There are many instances where the name Godan and Wodan are contracted to God and Wod. One instance is the wild hunt (a.k.a. Wodan's wild hunt) where Wod is used. The earliest uses of the word God in Germanic writing is often cited to be in the

Gothic Bible The Gothic Bible or Wulfila Bible is the Christian Bible in the Gothic language, which was spoken by the Eastern Germanic (Goths, Gothic) tribes in the Early Middle Ages. The translation was allegedly made by the Arianism, Arian bishop and m ...

or Wulfila Bible, which is the Christian Bible as translated by Ulfilas into the

Gothic language Gothic is an extinct language, extinct East Germanic languages, East Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the ''Codex Argenteus'', a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only Ea ...

spoken by the Eastern Germanic, or Gothic, tribes. The oldest parts of the Gothic Bible, contained in the

Codex Argenteus The (Latin for "Silver Book/Codex") is a 6th century, 6th-century illuminated manuscript, originally containing Gospel#Canonical gospels, part of the Gothic Bible, 4th-century translation of the Christian Bible into the Gothic language. Trad ...

, are estimated to be from the fourth century. During the fourth century, the

Goths The Goths were a Germanic people who played a major role in the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the emergence of medieval Europe. They were first reported by Graeco-Roman authors in the 3rd century AD, living north of the Danube in what is ...

were converted to Christianity, largely through the efforts of Bishop Ulfilas, who translated the Bible into the Gothic language in Nicopolis ad Istrum in today's northern Bulgaria. The words ''guda'' and ''guþ'' were used for God in the Gothic Bible.

Influence of Christianity

''God'' entered English when the language still had a system of

grammatical gender In linguistics, a grammatical gender system is a specific form of a noun class system, where nouns are assigned to gender categories that are often not related to the real-world qualities of the entities denoted by those nouns. In languages wit ...

. The word and its cognates were initially neuter but underwent transition when their speakers converted to Christianity, "as a means of distinguishing the personal God of the Christians from the impersonal divine powers acknowledged by pagans." However, traces of the neuter endured. While these words became syntactically masculine, so that

determiner Determiner, also called determinative ( abbreviated ), is a term used in some models of grammatical description to describe a word or affix belonging to a class of noun modifiers. A determiner combines with a noun to express its reference. Examp ...

s and

adjective An adjective (abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that describes or defines a noun or noun phrase. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives are considered one of the main part of speech, parts of ...

s connected to them took masculine endings, they sometimes remained morphologically neuter, which could be seen in their inflections: In the phrase, ''guþ meins'', "my God," from the Gothic Bible, for example, ''guþ'' inflects as if it were still a neuter because it lacks a final ''-s'', but the possessive adjective ''meins'' takes the final ''-s'' that it would with other masculine nouns. ''God'' and its cognates likely had a general, predominantly plural or collective sense prior to conversion to Christianity. After conversion, the word was commonly used in the singular to refer to the Christian deity, and also took on characteristics of a name.

Translations

The word ''god'' was used to represent Greek ''theos'' and

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

'' deus'' in

Bible The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...

translations, first in the Gothic translation of the

New Testament The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus, as well as events relating to Christianity in the 1st century, first-century Christianit ...

by Ulfilas. For the etymology of , see ''*''. Greek " θεός " () means god in English. It is often connected with Greek "θέω" (''theō''), "run", and "θεωρέω" (''theoreō''), "to look at, to see, to observe", Latin "holidays", "temple", and also Armenian "gods". Alternative suggestions (e.g. by De Saussure) connect ' "smoke, spirit", attested in Baltic and Germanic words for " spook" and ultimately cognate with Latin "smoke." The earliest attested form of the word is the

Mycenaean Greek Mycenaean Greek is the earliest attested form of the Greek language. It was spoken on the Greek mainland and Crete in Mycenaean Greece (16th to 12th centuries BC). The language is preserved in inscriptions in Linear B, a script first atteste ...

''te-o'' (plural ''te-o-i''), written in

Linear B Linear B is a syllabary, syllabic script that was used for writing in Mycenaean Greek, the earliest Attested language, attested form of the Greek language. The script predates the Greek alphabet by several centuries, the earliest known examp ...

syllabic script.

Capitalization

The development of

English orthography English orthography comprises the set of rules used when writing the English language, allowing readers and writers to associate written graphemes with the sounds of spoken English, as well as other features of the language. English's orthograp ...

was dominated by

Christian A Christian () is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, a Monotheism, monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus Christ. Christians form the largest religious community in the wo ...

texts. Capitalized, "

God In monotheistic belief systems, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. In polytheistic belief systems, a god is "a spirit or being believed to have created, or for controlling some part of the un ...

" was first used to refer to the Abrahamic God and may now signify any monotheistic conception of God, including the translations of the

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

', Persian '' Khuda'', Indic '' Ishvara'' and the Maasai . In the

English language English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples th ...

, capitalization is used for names by which a god is known, including "God". Consequently, its capitalized form is not used for multiple gods or when referring to the generic idea of a

deity A deity or god is a supernatural being considered to be sacred and worthy of worship due to having authority over some aspect of the universe and/or life. The ''Oxford Dictionary of English'' defines ''deity'' as a God (male deity), god or god ...

.Dictionary.com
"God /gɒd/ noun: 1. the one Supreme Being, the creator and ruler of the universe. 2. the Supreme Being considered with reference to a particular attribute. 3. (lowercase) one of several deities, esp. a male deity, presiding over some portion of worldly affairs. 4. (often lowercase) a supreme being according to some particular conception: the God of mercy. 5. Christian Science. the Supreme Being, understood as Life, Truth, Love, Mind, Soul, Spirit, Principle. 6. (lowercase) an image of a deity; an idol. 7. (lowercase) any deified person or object. 8. (often lowercase) Gods, Theater. 8a. the upper balcony in a theater. 8b. the spectators in this part of the balcony." Pronouns referring to a god are also often capitalized by adherents to a religion as an indication of reverence, and are traditionally in the

masculine gender In linguistics, a grammatical gender system is a specific form of a noun class system, where nouns are assigned to gender categories that are often not related to the real-world qualities of the entities denoted by those nouns. In languages wi ...

("He", "Him", "His" etc) unless specifically referring to a goddess.

References

External links