Faith & RitualGreek → English
Tetragrammaton
/ˌtɛtrəˈɡræmətɒn/noun
The four Hebrew consonants YHWH that spell the personal name of God.
The Greek roots
τετρα-
tetra-
four
γράμμα
grámma
letter
Literally: “the four-letter thing”
The story of the word
A Greek label for a Hebrew problem. The name was left unspoken in Jewish practice, with Adonai read aloud instead, so the vowels were never recorded. Medieval Christian scribes then stacked the vowels of Adonai onto the consonants of YHWH and read the result as Jehovah, a hybrid that no ancient Hebrew speaker ever uttered.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
Same family
grammartetrahedrondiagramprogramme
In a sentence
The scroll marks the tetragrammaton in an older script than the surrounding text.
Most modern translations render the tetragrammaton as LORD in small capitals.