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The most important name of God in Judaism is the Tetragrammaton, the four-letter name of God. This name is first mentioned in the book of Genesis and is usually translated as 'the Lord'. Because Jews for quite a long period of time considered it blasphemy to pronounce, the correct pronunciation of this name was forgotten — the original Hebrew texts only included consonants. Modern scholars conjecture that it was pronounced "Yahweh". The Hebrew letters are named Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh, and if your browser supports a Hebrew font it is written thus: יהוה (Note that Hebrew is written from right to left, rather than left to right as in English). In English it is written as YHVH or YHWH depending on transliteration convention. The Tetragrammaton was written in Paleo-Hebrew characters in some of the oldest surviving square Aramaic Hebrew texts, and it is speculated that it was even then read as Adonai 'My Lord' when encountered.
According to Jewish tradition, in appearance, YHVH is the third person singular imperfect of the verb "to be", meaning, therefore, "God is," or "God will be," or, perhaps, "God 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 Exodus 3:14, where God is represented as speaking, and hence as using the first person — "I am". 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.
The idea of life was traditionally connected with the name YHVH from medieval times. God is presented as a living God, as contrasted with the lifeless gods of the heathen, and God is presented as the source and author of life (comp. 1 Kings 18; Isaiah 41:26–29, 44:6–20; Jeremiah 10:10, 14; Genesis 2:7; etc.)
The name Yahweh is likely to be the origin of the Yao of Gnosticism. A few also think it might be cognate to Yaw of Ugaritic texts. If the Hehs in the Tetragrammaton are seen as sacred augmentation similar to those in Abraham (from Abram) and Sarah (from Sarai), then the association becomes clearer. But though in classical Hebrew Yahweh, the final Heh was not pronounced the medial Heh would have almost certainly been pronounced.
Jews also call God Adonai, Hebrew for "Lord". Formally this is plural (" Lords") but the plural is usually construed as respectful plural, not syntactic plural. Since pronouncing YHVH is considered sinful, Jews would use Adonai instead in prayers. When the Masoretes added vowel pointings to the text of the Tanakh in the first century A.D., they gave the word YHVH the vowels of Adonai, to remind the reader to say Adonai instead. Many Christian bibleThe Bible (From Greek βιβλια biblia meaning "books", which in turn is derived from βυβλος byblos meaning "papyrus", from the ancient Phoenician city of Byblos which exported papyrus) translators misinterpreted this to mean that God's name was Jehovah, which is the result of combining Adonai's vowels with YHVH's consonants, written using Latin orthography in which "J" is pronounced as the English "Y". This name is cognate to the name of the Greek god AdonisFor other uses of the name Adonis, see Adonis (disambiguation). Pompeii A Greek mythological hero, Adonis was one of the most complex figures in classical times. He had multiple roles and there has been much scholarship over the centuries of his meaning a which is a borrowing from Phoenician.