God’s name is NOT Jehovah

Jehovah was created by a misunderstanding.
First, Jehovah is the weirdest kind of portmanteau: it’s 1) the vowels of one Hebrew word (Adonai) inserted into 2) the consonants of another (Yahweh), with the result then 3) transliterated into various European languages. This is the colossal error I mentioned. We’re not quite sure who did it—though a sixteenth-century friar named Galatinus is often blamed—but we’re pretty sure we know why. The Jewish custom of avoiding saying the divine name meant that the four consonants of Yahweh (Y-H-W-H) came to be spelled with the vowels of Adonai as a reminder to say the latter instead of the former. Apparently someone (Galatinus?) didn’t realize what was going on and thought the traditional pastiche was itself a word: Jehovah. This custom spread and the word still exists today. But it all stems from a misunderstanding.