Hacker News Reader

This is not completely correct. Allah is a name as much as it is a "type". One of the things Arabs will point out is that Allah is "special" because it cannot be pluralized and hence is a better name for the monotheistic God than English God or Persian Khuda (which can be).

I'm a non-arabic speaking Muslim who prefers in non-liturgical context to use Khuda and have occasionally been "corrected" by well meaning folk.

View on HN

Allah can no longer be pluralized now, but it could be pluralized in older Arabic, before the conversion to the Muslim religion.

Remnants of that time can still be seen in the Christian/Judaic Bible, where the plural of the cognate Hebrew word, i.e. "Elohim", can be encountered, though even there it has acquired in many places a singular meaning.

my informal understanding is that Allah is a contraction of al-ilah or (the God), which was also at the time the name of a particular deity (a sort of supreme God also associated with rain). That might have to do with the associated inability to pluralize.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com