What does “hallowed be thy name” mean?

Hallowed means treated as holy — set apart, honoured, held sacred. It comes from the same old English root as holy, and it is a verb, not a decoration: to hallow something is to regard it as set apart rather than ordinary.

So “hallowed be thy name” is not a compliment paid to God before the requests begin. It is the first petition of the prayer — a request that God’s name be treated as holy. The Greek verb sits in a form that asks for something to happen, which is why modern translations often render it “may your name be honoured” or “let your name be kept holy.”

Asked plainly: let who you are be known and honoured as what it is. That is the opening ask of the prayer Jesus taught.

The petition cannot be separated from the address that comes immediately before it. In the Father’s Heart Bible, Matthew 6:9 reads: “This, then, is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.’” Luke’s shorter version is starker still: “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name.”

The name being hallowed is the name Father. That is the striking thing about the prayer and it is easy to read past. Jesus does not teach His followers to open with a title of power. He gives them the word He Himself used, and then asks that that name — Father — be honoured as holy.

Holiness and intimacy are not in competition in this sentence. The One who is nearest is also the One who is holy, and the prayer holds both in a single breath.

Most people know the line as “hallowed be thy name” because that is the King James wording, carried into centuries of liturgy and memory. Thy is simply the older English possessive — the equivalent of your. Nothing in the meaning turns on it.

What is worth knowing is that thou and thy were the familiar, intimate forms in older English, the words used with family and close friends, while you was the formal address for superiors and strangers. So the archaic phrasing that now sounds most distant to us was, in its own day, the most personal wording available.

The Father’s Heart Bible uses “your name” because that is what a reader today hears as ordinary and close — the same instinct the original phrasing was serving.

Because “hallowed be your name” is a request, it can be prayed rather than only recited. Three things it asks for, in the order the prayer itself suggests:

• That He be known as He actually is — not as a distant power or a rule-giver, but as the Father the rest of Scripture reveals.
• That His name be honoured in us — that the people who call Him Father do not make that name mean something false to those watching.
• That His name be honoured everywhere — which is why the very next line is “your kingdom come.” The two petitions are one movement.

Read in full, the prayer moves from who He is, to what He is doing, to what we need — and it begins by settling the first question before asking anything.