Here is one page of a 12 page article in the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia, Names of God.
Jewish Encyclopedia-Names of God
In appearance, Yhwh (יהוה) is the third person singular imperfect "kal" of the verb ( הוה ("to be"), meaning, therefore, "He is," or "He will be," or, perhaps, "He lives," the root idea of the word being, probably, "to blow," "to breathe," and hence, "to live." With this explanation agrees the meaning of the name given in Ex. iii. 14, where God is represented as speaking, and hence as using the first person—"I am" (אהיה, from ( היה, the later equivalent of the archaic stem ( הוה). The meaning would, therefore, be "He who is self-existing, self-sufficient," or, more concretely, "He who lives," the abstract conception of pure existence being foreign to Hebrew thought. There is no doubt that the idea of life was intimately connected with the name Yhwh from early times. He is the living God, as contrasted with the lifeless gods of the heathen, and He is the source and author of life (comp. I Kings xviii.; Isa. xli. 26-29, xliv. 6-20; Jer. x. 10, 14; Gen. ii. 7; etc.). So familiar is this conception of God to the Hebrew mind that it appears in the common formula of an oath, "hai Yhwh" ( חי־יהוה = "as Yhwh lives"; Ruth iii. 13; I Sam. xiv. 45; etc.).
If the explanation of the form above given be the true one, the original pronunciation must have been Yahweh ((יהוה) or Yahaweh (יהוה). From this the contracted form Jah or Yah (יה ) is most readily explained, and also the forms Jeho or Yeho (יהו ), and Jo or Yo (יו contracted from יהו , which the word assumes in combination in the first part of compound proper names, and Yahu or Yah (יהו ) in the second part of such names. The fact may also be mentioned that in Samaritan poetry יהוה rimes with words similar in ending to Yahweh, and Theodoret ("Quæst. 15 in Exodum") states that the Samaritans pronounced the name Iαβέ. Epiphanius ascribes the same pronunciation to an early Christian sect. Clement of Alexandria, still more exactly, pronounces 'Iαουέ or 'Iαουαί, and Origen, 'Iα. Aquila wrote the name in archaic Hebrew letters. In the Jewish-Egyptian magic-papyri it appears as Ιαωουηε. At least as early as the third century B.C. the name seems to have been regarded by the Jews as a "nomen ineffabile," on the basis of a somewhat extreme interpretation of Ex. xx. 7 and Lev. xxiv. 11 (see Philo, "De Vita Mosis," iii. 519, 529). Written only in consonants, the true pronunciation was forgotten by them. The Septuagint, and after it the New Testament, invariably render κύριος ("the Lord").
