In English, Dievas may be used as a word to describe the God (or, the supreme god) in the pre-Christian Baltic religion, where Dievas was understood to be the supreme being of the world. In Lithuanian and Latvian, it is also used to describe God as it is understood by major world religions today.[9] Earlier *Deivas simply denoted the shining sunlit dome of the sky, as in other Indo-European mythologies.[5] The celestial aspect is still apparent in phrases such as Saule noiet dievā ("The sun goes down to god"),[10] from Latvian folksongs. In Hinduism, a group of celestial deities are called the devas,[11] a result of shared Proto-Indo-European roots.
^Leach, Maria; Fried, Jerome (1949). Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend. Vol. 1. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. p. 631. OCLC3856950.
^Nav saulīte dievā gaiša, Latvian Daina (traditional Latvian folksong)