God

   As a vocative, ‘God’ occurs most frequently in prayers, but it has occasional usage in other contexts. In Romeo and Juliet (2:ii) Romeo asks: ‘What shall I swear by?’ Juliet replies: ‘Do not swear at all;/Or, if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self,/Which is the god of my idolatry.’

   The thought that Juliet is here expressing, that Romeo is her god, the object of her adoration, indicates how ‘god’ can become a vocative addressed to a loved one. In The Middle Man, by David Chandler, a modern Juliet says to her lover: ‘Desolate me, destroy me, my lover…my pitiless young god…’

   Used as a prefix in a number of relationships arising from adults acting as godparents to a child. The god-parents sponsor the child at baptism and make a profession of Christian faith on behalf of the infant. They are meant to guarantee the child’s subsequent religious education. The child may later address his god-parents as ‘god-father’ and ‘god-mother’. The latter occurs vocatively in Adam Bede, by George Eliot, where the woman concerned also uses ‘god-son’ in return. In I’ll Take Manhattan, by Judith Krantz, a girl who uses ‘god-mother’ is told by the woman concerned: ‘Could you please stop calling me god-mother?’ The unusual ‘my little god-sister’ is used in Villette, by Charlotte Brontë. This is used to a girl who has the same god-parents as the speaker. God-parents continue to sponsor babies at baptism in modern times, but the evidence suggests that the relationships are seldom acknowledged vocatively.