Hebrew; personal name of God; derived from ehyeh ("I Am," Ex. 3:14); also known as the Tetragrammaton. Israel viewed this name as too holy to be spoken, so, when reading the Scriptures, they substituted Adonai for YHWH. (In written Hebrew, the vowels from Adonai are placed with the consonants YHWH to remind readers.) According to The Da Vinci Code, YHWH came from the word Jehovah (309); in truth, Jehovah emerged when a sixteenth-century German translator combined Adonai 's vowels with YHWH and came up with Yahowah (German: Jehovah). See also Adonai; Jah; Jehovah; Tetragrammaton.