Did the Israelites Rip Off Their Name for God?

The names we give to God are always taken from naturally developing human languages. When the inspired authors of Sacred Scripture used names for God, they did the same. So the names El and Ya were different gods in the earlier religious understanding of the people, whether the Hebrews or the other peoples of Mesopotamian origins and beyond.

What is important is that these two terms are meant in the Old Testament to refer to one and the same God. Even our word for God goes back through Indo-European etymological roots and is related to the Latin Deus, and even to Zeus, and of course to the Greek Theos. The word origin can shed some light on the mentality or formation of the writers, but what is most important is the new, revealed meaning that the older, existing vocabulary was used to convey.

For example in Arabic the word for God is Allah or Illah, but the conceptions of God differ greatly among the Christians, Muslims, and even Jews who have historically used the Arabic language. So etymology is useful, but it does not prove any particular theological point all by itself.