The earliest written form of the Germanic word
God (always, in this usage,
capitalized[SUP]
[17][/SUP]) comes from the 6th-century
Christian Codex Argenteus. The English word itself is derived from the
Proto-Germanic *
ǥuđan. The reconstructed
Proto-Indo-European form * ǵhu-tó-m was likely based on the root * ǵhau(ə)-, which meant either "to call" or "to invoke".[SUP]
[18][/SUP] The Germanic words for
God were originally
neuter—applying to both genders—but during the process of the
Christianization of the
Germanic peoples from their indigenous
Germanic paganism, the words became a
masculine syntactic form.[SUP]
[19]
[/SUP]
In the
English language, the capitalized form of
God continues to represent a distinction between monotheistic "God" and "gods" in
polytheism.[SUP]
[20][/SUP][SUP]
[21][/SUP] The English word
God and its counterparts in other languages are normally used for any and all conceptions and, in spite of significant differences between religions, the term remains an English translation common to all. The same holds for Hebrew
El, but
in Judaism, God is also given a proper name, the
tetragrammaton YHWH, in origin the name of an
Edomite or
Midianite deity,
Yahweh. In many translations of the
Bible, when the word
LORD is in all capitals, it signifies that the word represents the tetragrammaton.[SUP]
[22][/SUP]
Allāh (
Arabic: الله) is the
Arabic term with no
plural used by Muslims and Arabic speaking Christians and Jews meaning "The God" (with a capital G), while "
ʾilāh" (
Arabic:
إله) is the term used for a deity or a god in general.[SUP]
[23][/SUP][SUP]
[24][/SUP][SUP]
[25][/SUP] God may also be given a proper name in monotheistic currents of Hinduism which emphasize the
personal nature of God, with early references to his name as
Krishna-
Vasudeva in
Bhagavata or later
Vishnu and
Hari.[SUP]
[26][/SUP]
