Capitalization of god.

[Dinosaur]

In most contexts, god is capitalized, while deity is not. It seems to me that god is a generic name equivalent to deity.

My POV is that English speaking Christians are chauvinistic or perhaps arrogant in requiring that god be capitalized in most contexts. Exceptions: Name a Greek god. Deity is a synonym for god.

What about other Christian languages? Is dieu capitalized? Does French have any synonyms for dieu?

 

[KitemanSA]

English writers do NOT require that "god" be capitalized in most cases, only the one case that it is used as the NAME of their god. And all names are capitalized.

 

[Jeeves]

Christians assume that there is only the one god they worship, so they use the word as a name, and disregard all other deities. Non-Christians either use the name of whatever deity they'd learned as children, or capitalize God, in any context, simply from the habit of seeing it that way in print. (And some people capitalize whimsically.) My policy is to refer to gods, a god, or the god in a particular discussion, or a specific deity by by name [Jehovah; Thor; Quetzaecaotl] or nickname [Big Omni; FSM; Sky Daddy] in which case all are capitalized.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

In most contexts, god is capitalized, while deity is not. It seems to me that god is a generic name equivalent to deity. My POV is that English speaking Christians are chauvinistic or perhaps arrogant in requiring that god be capitalized in most contexts. Exceptions: Name a Greek god. Deity is a synonym for god.

The English word "god/God" has two basic meanings.

• 1. (Always lower case in edited writing) Any of the multiple deities in a polytheistic religion or philosophy, often reigning over a specific portion or aspect of the universe, such as "Ares, the god of war." In this usage, the word "god" invariably takes a definite or indefinite article: the god or a god. It is a common noun, not a proper name.
• 2. (Always upper case in edited writing) The single deity in the monotheistic Abrahamic religions most familiar to anglophones: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Rastafarianism and (arguably) Baha'i. In the context of Islam, the Arabic translation "Allah" is preferred both by editors and in vernacular speech. Rastafarians prefer the name "Jah" but are comfortable with "God." (Other monotheistic religions are virtually unknown among anglophones so there is no style standard for writing the names of their deities.) In this usage, the word "God" never takes an article except as required for more complicated syntax such as "the God of the Israelites." It is a proper name, not a common noun.

So your cue is: If it takes an article, then it refers to one of many gods, so it is a common noun and is written in lower case. If it stands alone with no article, then it is the single deity of one of the monotheistic religions, so it is a proper name and is written in upper case.

In venues such as SciForums, where hostility to religion is at least common and perhaps even the majority opinion, and furthermore where there are few editorial standards of style, members are free to write "god" in lower case even when referring to the God of Abraham, as a deliberate insult to Abrahamists.

But if they are misunderstood, the Linguistics Moderator (who in real life is a writer and editor) will not rescue them.

What about other Christian languages? Is dieu capitalized? Does French have any synonyms for dieu?

The French capitalize Dieu when it means God and write lower case dieu when it means god. Dios is capitalized in Spanish and Deus in Portuguese. In both languages el dios/o deus or un dios/um deus is written in lower case, referring to one of multiple gods in a polytheistic religion. Spanish has the word deidad, the same Latin word from which we get "deity." Since we got that word via French, the French still have it: déité. The Portuguese use the word divinidade instead, the etymological equivalent of our word "divinity": the quality of godhood, not the white fudge.

 

[Rav]

Also, if such capitalization bothers you, you can just make use of words like "fictional" or "mythical" alongside it, as one might do when discussing Gandalf, or Zeus. That way you can be insulting and grammatically correct at the same time.

 

[iceaura]

Am I the only thread visitor who forgot which forum they were in, and opened the thread anticipating a discussion of the financial backing behind the establishment of the Abrahamic deity ?

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Also, if such capitalization bothers you, you can just make use of words like "fictional" or "mythical" alongside it, as one might do when discussing Gandalf, or Zeus. That way you can be insulting and grammatically correct at the same time.

I try to avoid having to capitalize it so I restructure my sentences. "The Christian god," "the god of the Abrahamic religions," etc. Although I wrote "the God of Abraham" above, I would probably not flinch to write "the god of Abraham." After all, I'm the one who said that if the word takes a definite or indefinite article, then it is a common noun and does not require capitalization.

Am I the only thread visitor who forgot which forum they were in, and opened the thread anticipating a discussion of the financial backing behind the establishment of the Abrahamic deity ?

What if the capitalization is followed by securitization, like everything else these days?

Referring back to the O.P., I don't think the Christians were necessarily arrogant when they decided to capitalize the word. I think the arrogance was in appropriating the common noun "god" as a proper noun to serve as a name. And we can't blame the anglophones, the francophones, or any existing people for that. The Roman Christians called their god Deus.

I don't know too much about ancient Greece, but the Greeks translated the Bible into their language before the Romans did. I have no idea what word/name they used for the deity.

In the books of the Old Testament (the Torah) that were written in Hebrew, the generic Hebrew word for "gods," elohim, is used early on, but once the single god is established, that word is not used anymore. The Muslims, on the other hand, use "Allah," which is their form of the same word. (Vowels get very little respect in the Afroasiatic language family so they change capriciously from one language to another.)

 

[Gudikan]

I read not long ago that in Ancient Greek, they used a definite article with the monotheistic god, and that in Latin, which had no general definite/indefinite distinction, there was no article. Modern western languages have copied the Latin rather than the Greek format - simultaneously deeming the word God to be a proper noun - and it is only because we have three types of definiteness (the, a/an, neither) that we can distinguish "God" from "a god". (I got this information from an Esperanto source, because there, where there are only two types of definiteness, an extra determiner is necessary to distinguish between "God" and "a god".)

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

I read not long ago that in Ancient Greek, they used a definite article with the monotheistic god, and that in Latin, which had no general definite/indefinite distinction . . . .

Latin has no definite article, and like the other languages I'm familiar with that have no definite article, it does not use the word "one" as an indefinite article. So deus means "a god," "the god," or "god." Lower-case letters are a fairly recent innovation, but I suppose they were in use by the time monotheism spread into the Roman empire.

I got this information from an Esperanto source, because there, where there are only two types of definiteness, an extra determiner is necessary to distinguish between "God" and "a god".

I speak Esperanto. Zamenhof was quite a scholar, fluent in several Indo-European languages (Russian, Polish, Yiddish, German, English, French, Latin and Greek) as well as Hebrew. His goal was to make his universala lingvo attractive to Europeans. I'm sure he decided to capitalize Dio as a nod to the sensibilities of European Christians and Jews.

If you ask me, naming your god "God" is about as dumb as naming your cat "Cat." Sheer failure of creativity.

 

[Der Großmann]

Capitalise it if you are talking about a specific one, as if you were talking about or to a person.

• Oh merciful God, forgive me
• I am Christian, and I pray to God

Do not capitalise it you do not refer to any one specifically

• Which god do you worship? Oh, you are an atheist? Fair enough
• I answer to nobody. Not to any human, any god or any deity!