What is the real name of God? YHWH, Jehovah, Yahweh?

by Matt Slick

There is no correct pronunciation for the name of God, so we cannot tell what the "real" name of God is.  However, in Exodus 3:13-14 it says, “Then Moses said to God, ‘Behold, I am going to the sons of Israel, and I shall say to them, “The God of your fathers has sent me to you.” Now they may say to me, ‘What is His name?’ What shall I say to them?” 14 And God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM”; and He said, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”

When God says "I AM” he is speaking his name.  In the Hebrew language that this verse was written in, the letters are yod, he, vav, he, from which we get YHWH.  These four letters were very loosely translated into the English ‘Jehovah.’  However, there is no ‘j’ sound in the Hebrew.  So, a better approximation of the name of God would be Yahweh.

But, a further problem in the pronunciation of God’s name is that the ancient Hebrews did not use vowel designations when writing the Scriptures.  They only used consonants.  Therefore, the phrase “The name of God is YHWH” would appear as “th nm f gd s yhwh.”  This wasn’t a problem with the Hebrews because they knew what the words were and how to pronounce them.  It was not until many hundreds of years later that the Jews started to insert what was called ‘vowel points’ into the copied texts of the Hebrew Old Testament.

But unfortunately for us, we still don't know exactly which vowel sounds are the correct ones.

Nevertheless, from the text above the proper name of God is "I AM," which we transliterate into the English YHWH.