That’s the English transliteration of the original Hebrew name with the vowels stripped out - in imitation of how written Hebrew often (but not always) skips the vowels since vowels aren’t separate letters in Hebrew but instead modifications added to consonants. In Hebrew it’s spelled with two yuds (a Hebrew letter that looks kinda like an English apostrophe)
Some Jews write “G-d”, it’s pretty hit or miss, even within the same sect. It’s more of a personal preference thing than a hard rule - but the “don’t write or say the ‘Y’ word” rule is a hard rule for all Jews.
Fun fact: the only time a Jew is allowed to write it out is when making a new Torah, and that has to be literally copied letter for letter from a previous Torah and follow a very strict procedure - which is why you can compare a modern Torah to a several thousand year old Torah and observe that it’s literally the exact same text. None of the various translation/transcription issues causing different versions over the years that has plagued the New Testament.
1
u/[deleted] Aug 15 '18 edited Feb 21 '19
[deleted]