Hebrew (אֲדֹנָי) means - "my Lord".
This was used by the Phoenicians for the God Tammuz and is the origin of the Greek name Adonis. Jews only use the singular to refer to a distinguished person: in the plural, "rabotai", literally, "my masters", is used in both Mishnaic and modern Hebrew. The plural form is usually explained as pluralis excellentiae. The pronunciation of the tetragrammaton came to be avoided by the Hellenistic period. Jews use Adonai instead in prayers, and colloquially would use Hashem ("the Name"). When the Masoretes added vowel pointings to the text of the Hebrew Bible around the 8th century CE, they gave the word YHWH vowels very similar to that of Adonai. Tradition has dictated this is to remind the reader to say Adonai instead. The Sephardi translators of the Ferrara Bible go further and replace Adonai with A. Later medieval Christian Biblical scholars took this vowel substitution for the actual spelling of YHWH and misinterpreted the name of God as Jehovah.
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