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Does the word 'God' with a capital G have a plural form?

psmears
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nicholas ainsworth
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6 Answers6

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This is not a problem of monotheistic preference.

When capitalised, the word god is a proper name. So from the pure grammatical point of view, it can have a plural form in the same way as John or Peter (credits to jgelacqua's comments)

It's like Yahweh or Elohim (actually this is a plural I believe - which shows that monotheism in the bible is a fuzzy notion).

Alain Pannetier Φ
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    Yet we could say, 'OK, all of the Bobs and Charlies form a line over here, Daves and Erics form a line down there.' – jbelacqua Apr 01 '11 at 21:22
  • As @jgbelacqua points out from a grammatical point of view you could use proper names in the plural, but I struggle to think of a case in any world view where this would ever occur unless some freaks used it as a child name and they all got together. – Caleb Apr 01 '11 at 21:27
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    As for Elohim being plural it isn't that the idea of monotheism is a fuzzy notion. The God of the bible is ONE, but has three distinct persons that make up that entity, all being fully God in nature and essence. It is even found that God refers to himself in first person plural, "let us" or "our". This is almost always combined with a first person singular in the same sentence emphasizing that there is still only one identity at stake even if He has multiple persons. – Caleb Apr 01 '11 at 21:31
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    @Caleb, Sorry but the dogma of the Holy Trinity is much more recent than the word Elohim. If you wish to know why Elohim is a plural in the bible, please have a look at the exegete's works regarding this topic. – Alain Pannetier Φ Apr 01 '11 at 21:35
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    @Caleb that's but one take on it. The doctrine of the Trinity is not in the Bible. – jbelacqua Apr 01 '11 at 21:37
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    @jgbelacqua, Correct ! Assuming somebody wants to create (sorry has been revealed) his own religion with 2 gods, both of them named God, then, from the purely grammatical point of view, he would be entitled to write "Gods". Assuming he would use English as one of the languages in which to write his sacred/revealed texts, as so many other religions also do. Conversely, considering that so many English speakers have non monotheistic religions, the plural form might have some favour. – Alain Pannetier Φ Apr 01 '11 at 21:40
  • There are no capital letters in Hebrew. – Sam Apr 01 '11 at 22:11
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    +1 for plural form. This is pretty much how it is. When translating old testament text there are many Hebrew names for God that are simply translated God (or Lord, LORD, etc.. depending on name/context) The Hebrew concept of God is a monotheistic god but with many sides/faces/personalities. The compassionate God, the wrathful God, God as judge, God as forgiver, and so on. At some points they refer to multiple personalities collectively in a plural form. I don't know of an english translation that conveys this. Usually in the new testament greek God is simply 'Theos'. – That Realtor Programmer Guy Apr 02 '11 at 03:11
  • @Caleb, I've used it in explaining the name confusions we had in a team once, where we had two Peters, two Jons, and two Annas. – Peter Taylor Apr 02 '11 at 07:11
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    @Garet. Good comment. Please consider another example in the Greek Pantheon. Adonais comes as an implicit plural form. And guess what ? It's from oriental origin as well ! – Alain Pannetier Φ Apr 02 '11 at 07:27
  • @Alain ack how did I not consider Adonais! I had not heard about this though. Any resource on the oriental etymology? – That Realtor Programmer Guy Apr 02 '11 at 07:44
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    @Garet, I read that eons ago in a French book but you can find some hints (and a relation to non other than Yahweh himself) in this paragraph of the wikipedia entry. – Alain Pannetier Φ Apr 02 '11 at 08:20
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"God" is a proper noun. While proper nouns can be pluralized in some cases, it is not very common, and especially not so with "God".

However, I can think of an example. Here is an example with the proper noun, "Bob":

How many Bobs would it take to beat up Charlie?

That is, if Bob could be copied and the copies could fight Charlie, how many would it take to beat up Charlie? This example can be revisited with the proper noun, "God":

How many Gods would it take to beat up Satan?

Peter Olson
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Sure, why not?

If I don't presuppose that the term refers to one Supreme Being, I can imagine that there are more Supreme Beings. Gods and Goddesses. Unsurprisingly, the word "Gods" does appear in writing. What about the Fates, the Graces, the Norns? Burger Kings or Targets or KwikMarts? What about Egyptians or Armenians, Tudors and Plantagenets, or Kochs or Kardashians?

An interesting construction I discovered on a Hindu information site is "Forms of God" (as well as "Forms of Goddess"). This is an interesting plural, for a presumably (but not necessarily) different God-concept.

I suppose it a philosophical, religious, and/or metaphysical question whether the capitalized "God" is a name, a description, an honorary label, or something else. The different possibilities don't change the fact that mechanically, you can pluralize God. Whether one does so or not will depend on the meaning of the of the name/symbol/label to that person or group.

jbelacqua
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    No, there can't be more than one Supreme Being, any more than there can be more than one largest member of a set. (There may be none, of course). – Tim Lymington May 31 '11 at 15:58
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Interesting question. My intuition suggests that the convention is the capital 'G' is singular and reserved for monotheistic, Abrahamic religions and the lower-case usage is used in conjunction with other faiths which, it is of course assumed are polytheistic and therefore wrong.

I think of the sentence 'worshiping false gods so it sort of depends on the context. You'd never write '... our Gods' unless of course you were writing the speech for a heathen character.

immutabl
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    I believe the actual usage is that the capital is used for a deity the speaker believes in. In which case "Gods" cannot be used by a monotheist, by easily by a polytheist. – Ben Voigt Jun 15 '11 at 00:55
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It might be illustrative to compare it to something more unique than a person's proper name. While we expect there to be many Bobs and Johns, talking about "Gods" may be more like talking about "Englands" or "Swedens". Or "Princes" or "Madonnas"…

Grammatically sound, semantically a little strange, but possible. I suppose you could say things like "Traffic-wise, there aren't many Englands in this world" and "Stricture-wise, there aren't many Gods in religion".

Then again, people use "God" to refer to quite different concepts. I'm sure you could argue that two different persons' Gods (!) are as different as two different Bobs.

Henrik N
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No. There are no known religions whose translation(s) of their scripturs or theology into English or tradition in English allow a plural and capitalized name 'Gods'.

Mitch
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    Disagree. Let's imagine we are writing a story about a religious play in which we have Jesus, God, Mary, et al. And there is an understudy for God. So there's two of them. In one line of dialogue, the director might say, "OK, I want Jesus over there, and I need both Gods to come over here." It's possible. – The Raven Apr 01 '11 at 23:37
  • The Greek or Hindu pantheon of Gods ...? – immutabl Apr 21 '11 at 16:10
  • @5arx: That might be appropriate, except that in English, spoken (as a first language) in a predominantly Christian culture, you would properly refer to a set of members of those entities as 'gods'. Why is 'I', the first person singular pronoun, always capitalized, but 'you' is not? Kinda egotistical, but that's what they do. – Mitch Apr 21 '11 at 16:24
  • @Mitch - Its a language that supports the Abrahamic monotheistic cultures so I guess its appropropriate. I would always use a capital G for 'God/s' regardless myself. Anything else would be disrespectful to the Almighty(ies) ;-) – immutabl May 03 '11 at 09:56
  • @5arx, Most polytheists are happy to refer to their gods with lowercase. – TRiG May 29 '11 at 01:43
  • @TRiG - you have no evidence whatsover to back up this claim. I for one always capitalise. – immutabl May 29 '11 at 03:24
  • @5arx, The polytheists I hang around with at The Slacktiverse use a lowercase g, and so did those at H2G2. (I've not seen polytheists at H2G2 in a while.) – TRiG May 29 '11 at 20:43
  • That's hardly 'evidence'. I would suggest taking a look at some 'polytheist' literature might be a more academic approach. – immutabl May 30 '11 at 12:23
  • @5arx: don't you see a problem with the word "Almighties"? – Tim Lymington May 31 '11 at 15:30
  • Not really - you appear to have handled the pluralisation correctly ;-) – immutabl May 31 '11 at 15:42
  • @5arx, Is there any literature you'd recommend?

    I saw plural Gods for the first time today in page two of the comments at http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2011/06/at-patheos-tf-how-not-to-do-evangelism.html.

     – TRiG Jun 15 '11 at 19:52
  • I wouldn't 'recommend' or indeed categorise them as 'literature', but for the purposes of backing-up my argument re: usage, I would, off the top of my head point you towards Erich von Daniken's work: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_von_D%C3%A4niken#Bibliography) an obvious example - lots of titles taking the form 'X of the Gods' – immutabl Jun 16 '11 at 10:19
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    @5arx: so close! I'm not convinced by that because the capitalization comes from that for beng in a title. – Mitch Jun 16 '11 at 12:47
  • @Mitch - Jeez, what do you want, b l o o d ? ;-) – immutabl Jun 17 '11 at 14:27