Zeus - Name

Name

The god's name in the nominativ is Ζεύς Zeús /zdeús/ . It is inflected as follows: vocative : Ζεῦ / Zeû ; accusative : Δία / Día ; genitive : Διός / Diós ; dative : Διί / Dií)

The name Zeus is the Greek continuation of *Di̯ēus, the Proto-Indo-European god of the daytime sky, also called *Dyeus ph₂tēr ("Sky Father"). The god is known under this name in the Rigveda (Vedic Sanskrit Dyaus/Dyaus Pita), Latin (compare Jupiter, from Iuppiter, deriving from the Proto-Indo-European vocative *dyeu-ph₂tēr), deriving from the root *dyeu- ("to shine", and in its many derivatives, "sky, heaven, god"). Zeus is the only deity in the Olympic pantheon whose name has such a transparent Indo-European etymology.

In Minoan and Mycenaean culture, Zeus was not worshipped by mainstream worshipers, rather in small cults that thought of him as a mortal demigod that was eventually killed. The earliest forms of the name are the Mycenaean Greek di-we and di-wo, written in Linear b syllabic script.