Zeus the nominative is ("Zeús"). It is inflected as follows: vocative: (""); accusative: (); genitive: (); dative: (). Diogenes Laertius quotes Pherecydes of Syros as spelling the name, . "Zeus" is the Greek continuation of *"," the name of the Proto-Indo-European god of the daytime sky, also called *' ("Sky Father"). The god is known under this name in the Rigveda (Vedic Sanskrit "Dyaus/Dyaus Pita"), Latin (compare "Jupiter", from "Iuppiter", deriving from the Proto-Indo-European vocative *'), deriving from the root *"dyeu"- ("to shine", and in its many derivatives, "sky, heaven, god"). Zeus is the only deity in the Olympic pantheon whose
Zeus the birthplace of Zeus as Crete. Minoan culture contributed many essentials of ancient Greek religion: "by a hundred channels the old civilization emptied itself into the new", Will Durant observed, and Cretan Zeus retained his youthful Minoan features. The local child of the Great Mother, "a small and inferior deity who took the roles of son and consort", whose Minoan name the Greeks Hellenized as Velchanos, was in time assumed as an epithet by Zeus, as transpired at many other sites, and he came to be venerated in Crete as Zeus Velchanos ("boy-Zeus"), often simply the "Kouros". In Crete, Zeus