Where does the word/name 'God' originate from?

Question

Does it translate into something meaningful, or is it simply a name describing the Divine?

Answer 1

It comes from Old English, a Germanic language from where modern English came from. The root meaning is the same as as the similar English word "good." So, the word God means good.

Doing some more research, it seems that the root word from which the word God originally came might have been a Germanic word for libations or that (an idol) which water was poured over. Or it could have referred to a spirit of a burial mound, or it could have meant invocation (prayer), or it could have been derived from a famous hero.

Things are always more complicated the more you deleve into them.

Answer 2

GOD - The English word God is identical with the Anglo-Saxon word for “good,” and therefore it is believed that the name God refers to the divine goodness

Answer 3

Its simply the Anglo Saxon word given to describe the divine, it has no other meaning. When translated though and used properly it is a word with the greatest meaning in the world. For without, we have nothing, we are nothing, we mean nothing. God bless you always.

Answer 4

Theos, Adonai, El...

The JW's claim that we should be using the "covenant name" of God, YHVH, yet NONE of the evidence from the first several centuries of Christianity indicates that ANYONE ever did that.

The Jewish Christians CONTINUED to use ALTERNATE WORDS rather than say the "name." The Gentile Christians knew only their own language forms, the common Greek form was Theos.

As for the English word, it comes from Old English and means a "supreme being."

Answer 5

The name God refers to the deity held by monotheists to be the supreme reality. God is generally regarded as the sole creator of the universe.[1] As of 2007, a majority of human beings are classified as adherents of religions that worship a monotheistic God, usually the Abrahamic God of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.[2]

Theologians have ascribed certain attributes to God, including omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, perfect goodness, divine simplicity, and eternal and necessary existence. He has been described as incorporeal, a personal being, a source of moral obligation, and the greatest conceivable existent.[1] These attributes were supported to varying degrees by the early Christian, Muslim, and Jewish scholars, including St Augustine,[3] Al-Ghazali,[4] and Maimonides,[3] respectively.

All the notable medieval philosophers developed arguments for the existence of God,[4] attempting to wrestle with the contradictions God's attributes seem to imply. The last few hundred years of philosophy have seen sustained attacks on some of the arguments for God's existence, put forth by such philosophers as Immanual Kant, David Hume and Antony Flew, although Kant held that the Argument from morality for the existence of God was valid. The theist response has been either to contend, like Alvin Plantinga, that faith is properly basic; or to accept, like Richard Swinburne, the evidentialist challenge.[5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God

Answer 6

The word God is derived from the German word good. Therefore that is the connotation it carries.

Answer 7

it's just a word meaning a "supernatural being worshipped as controlling some part of the world or some aspect of life or who is the personification of a force"

Answer 8

The name God ultimately comes from God, as does everything else.

Answer 9

Good question. It ultimately originates from GOD. It is meaningful differently to each person.

Answer 10

Don't know, but it is one of the names/words that can be said loudly, firmly. That is worth pondering on.