Oddly, the exact history of the word
God is unknown. The word
God is a relatively new European invention, which was never used in any of the ancient Judaeo-Christian scripture manuscripts that were written in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek or Latin.
According to the best efforts of linguists and researchers, the root of the present word
God is the Sanskrit word
hu which means
to call upon, invoke, implore.
Nonetheless, it is also interesting to note the similarity to the ancient Persian word for
God which is
Khoda.
The following is a survey of some of the efforts of those who have been trying to decipher the ancient roots of the word
God:
Webster's 1913 Dictionary:
\God\ (g[o^]d), n. [AS. god; akin to OS. & D. god, OHG. got, G. gott, Icel. gu[eth], go[eth], Sw. & Dan. gud, Goth. gup, prob. orig. a p. p. from a root appearing in Skr. h[=u], p. p. h[=u]ta, to call upon, invoke, implore. [root]30. Cf. {Goodbye}, {Gospel}, {Gossip}.]
http://www.hyperdictionary.com/dictionary/god
Catholic Encyclopedia:
Etymology of the Word "God"
(Anglo-Saxon God; German Gott; akin to Persian khoda; Hindu khooda).
God can variously be defined as:
- the proper name of the one Supreme and Infinite Personal Being, the Creator and Ruler of the universe, to whom man owes obedience and worship;
- the common or generic name of the several supposed beings to whom, in polytheistic religions, Divine attributes are ascribed and Divine worship rendered;
- the name sometimes applied to an idol as the image or dwelling-place of a god.
The root-meaning of the name (from Gothic root gheu; Sanskrit hub or emu, "to invoke or to sacrifice to") is either "the one invoked" or "the one sacrificed to." From different Indo-Germanic roots (div, "to shine" or "give light"; thes in thessasthai "to implore") come the Indo-Iranian deva, Sanskrit dyaus (gen. divas), Latin deus, Greek theos, Irish and Gaelic dia, all of which are generic names; also Greek Zeus (gen. Dios, Latin Jupiter (jovpater), Old Teutonic Tiu or Tiw (surviving in Tuesday), Latin Janus, Diana, and other proper names of pagan deities. The common name most widely used in Semitic occurs as 'el in Hebrew, 'ilu in Babylonian, 'ilah in Arabic, etc.; and though scholars are not agreed on the point, the root-meaning most probably is "the strong or mighty one."
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06608x.htm
Oxford English Dictionary:
"god (
gρd). Also 3-4 godd. [Com. Teut.: OE. god (masc. in sing.; pl.
godu,
godo neut.,
godas masc.) corresponds to OFris., OS., Du.
god masc., OHG.
got,
cot (MHG.
got, mod.Ger.
gott) masc., ON.
goð,
guð neut. and masc., pl.
goð,
guð neut. (later Icel. pl.
guðir masc.; Sw., Da.
gud), Goth.
guÞ (masc. in sing.; pl.
guÞa,
guda neut.). The Goth. and ON. words always follow the neuter declension, though when used in the Christian sense they are syntactically masc. The OTeut. type is therefore *
guđom neut., the adoption of the masculine concord being presumably due to the Christian use of the word. The neuter sb., in its original heathen use, would answer rather to L.
numen than to L.
deus. Another approximate equivalent of
deus in OTeut. was *
ansu-z (Goth. in latinized pl. form
anses, ON.
ρss, OE.
Ós- in personal names,
ésa genit. pl.); but this seems to have been applied only to the higher deities of the native pantheon, never to foreign gods; and it never came into Christian use.
The ulterior etymology is disputed. Apart from the unlikely hypothesis of adoption from some foreign tongue, the OTeut. *
gubom implies as its pre-Teut. type either *
ghudho-m or *
ghutó-m. The former does not appear to admit of explanation; but the latter would represent the neut. of the passive pple. of a root *
gheu-. There are two Aryan roots of the required form (both *
glheu, with palatal aspirate): one meaning ‘to invoke’ (Skr. h
ū), the other ‘to pour, to offer sacrifice’ (Skr. hu, Gr.
χέειν, OE. yéotan Y
ETE v.). Hence *
glhutó-m has been variously interpreted as ‘what is invoked’ (cf. Skr.
puru-hūta ‘much-invoked’, an epithet of Indra) and as ‘what is worshipped by sacrifice’ (cf. Skr.
hutá, which occurs in the sense ‘sacrificed to’ as well as in that of ‘offered in sacrifice’
. Either of these conjectures is fairly plausible, as they both yield a sense practically coincident with the most obvious definition deducible from the actual use of the word, ‘an object of worship’.
Some scholars, accepting the derivation from the root *
glheu- to pour, have supposed the etymological sense to be ‘molten image’ (= Gr.
χυγόν), but the assumed development of meaning seems very unlikely.
transcribed from The Oxford English Dictionary
