Reply #117: Both "names" are essentially a variation of YHWH....

[BadFaith]

Which is the Tetragrammaton, or "the Four Letter Name" that according to the Kabbalists has somewhere around thirty distinct pronunciations, the original of which has long since been lost (perhaps deliberately, as the Hebrews had a strict policy against saying the name of God). YHWH is composed of the abbreviated forms of the imperfect, the participle, and the perfect of the Hebrew verb "to be" (yehi, howeh, and hawah). According to this explanation, the meaning of YHWH would be "he who will be, is, and has been", but such a word-formation has no analogy in the Hebrew language. YHWH, spelled in Hebrew, is a human pictogram:



Yahweh is the most popular English variant. Jehovah is essentially the same, though some recent scholars believe it is a mispronunciation of YHWH. Originally, the Hebrew alphabet contained no vowels, so writers used dots around consonants to help the reader pronounce words (these are called vowel points). Now, because YHWH was forbidden to be uttered, Biblical writers used the vowel points for the words Adonai ("Lord") or Elohim (a plural noun often used as a common name, as in "God") when they wrote the Tetragrammaton. It is believed that Jehovah is thus a mispronunciation of YHWH because it is essentially using the wrong vowel points.