The Online Etymoogy Dictionary suggests that the English Word may be in part from Hel, in Norse mythology Loki's daughter, who rules over the evil dead in Niflheim, the lowest of the underworlds.
The Germanic/Norse Word "Hel" for the underworld was used in the King James Bible to translate Old Testament Hebrew "Sheol" and New testament Greek "Hades" and "Gehenna", thus happily mingling and confusing Greek, Palestinian and North German folklore.
Gehenna was a Greek corruption of the Hebrew for "the Valley of Hinnom," southwest of Jerusalem, where, according to Jer. xix.5, children were sacrificed to Moloch.
Haides was (in Homer's writings) the name of the Greek god of the underworld, and the underworld itself.
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