the name of the God of Israel worshipped by the Jahwist prophets in the kingdoms of Israel and Judah in antiquity
Yahweh is the standard English spelling for the ancient West Semitic Hebrew name יהוה, which is central to discussions of the religions of Israel and Judah. While German scholars adopted the form Jahweh in the 1850s, the English version Yahweh emerged in the 1860s to ensure the initial consonant was pronounced as a "y" sound.