Quote:I'm assuming they're interchangeable and don't have specific purposes?
They're actually the same name with different vowels. The Bible was written in Ancient Hebrew, and there are no vowels in written Ancient Hebrew (actually, there are a few signs for the vowels, but they were added in more recenttimes). So what we know is that the name of god in the Bible was JHVH, JHWH or YHWH according to the different translitterations from Hebrew.
The Jews believed that name of god to be sacred and usually refused the pronounce it (they still do, as far as I know). So we don't know much about the vowels of the name of god.
How did the writers of the Bible pronounce this name? Hard to tell, since they've been dead for more than two thousand years. So people added vowels according to their studies and personal preferences.
Yaweh is YHWH plus A and E, and it's the choice that most people make (including the modern Jews). This is because ancient Greek writers who wrote about the Hebrew culture, like Theodoret of Cyrus (no relation to Cyrus the Virus
) or Clement of Alexandria translitterated YHWH as "jabe".Jehovah is JHVH plus E, O and A. Some bibles written in Medieval times show the signs for the vowels E, O and A between the consonants JHVH. So the translitteration Jehovah (or Yehovah) became popular in the Middle Ages. The King James version of the Bible used it and that's why it is still in use in the English language, even though most Bible scholars reject it.
As for other names of god, there's so many of them that I could write a book about them (some people have). The English god is probably related the Germanic verb *[i]gheu[/i, which means "to invoked", so god should mean "the one that we invoke".
