Because the correct name YA’OH is gaining traction as it shines its blazing light across the world, I am beginning to hear some of our people say that His name is YaHaWaH but there is no way to write this in Greek. They are saying this because it is becoming increasingly clear to many as a result of my work that the pronunciation YA’OH is abundantly attested before the English language ever existed, when many educated people in the world spoke Greek, and even before the Greek language ever existed. But it is simply not true that there is no way to write “YaHaWaH” in Greek.
If the Tetragrammaton is really pronounced as three syllables, Ya-Ha-WaH, then there would be a way to transcribe this outrageously childish and offensive monstrosity into Greek and capture the phonetics.
The initial syllable /Ya/ would be represented in Greek by the letter iota (ἰ) and by the letter alpha (α).
The second syllable /Ha/ would be written in Greek with the letter heta (ἥ) which was still pronounced as the rough breathing H in Roman times as per Dionysius Thrax (2nd century BC), and by the letter alpha (α).
By the way, here is the Dionysius Thrax reference: παρὰ τοῖς ἀρχαίοις ὁ τύπος τοῦ Η ἐν τύπῳ δασείας ἔκειτο, ὥσπερ καὶ νῦν <παρὰ> τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις — Alfredus Hilgard (ed), “In artis Dionysianae §6” in Grammatici Graeci. Scholia in Dionysii Thracis Artem Grammaticam (1901), p. 486.
The third syllable /Wa/ with the voiced labial-velar approximant consonant sound /w/ would be represented in Greek by the voiced bilabial fricative letter beta (β), just as the Samaritan pronunciation “Yah-Weh” was written in Greek as ἰαβε. Here the Greek letter beta is being utilized in this transcription in order to approximate the voiced labial-velar approximant consonant sound /w/. This consonant could also be represented by the double-upsilon digraph ⟨uu⟩ which in fact is the ultimate origin of the shape of the letter W itself. Either way, β+α or uu+α would represent the syllable /Wa/ in Greek if the Tetragrammaton was pronounced with this syllable.
So there you have it. If anyone insists that the correct pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton is this ridiculously absurd “YaHaWaH”, which was born in the USA like Bruce Springsteen, ask them to produce any record from before the time English existed, when Greek was the spoken lingua franca of the world, that shows the Tetragrammaton being spelled out in Greek transliteration as…
ἰαἥαβα (or) ἰαἥαυυα
Until they can do that they can kindly sit down and remain silent. The same is true with the bogus name Yahuah. There are no transliterations in Greek that reflect this pronunciation because it too was born in the USA and did not exist prior.
His name is YA’OH
Always has been. Always will be.
ἰαἥαυυα seems about right!