Yes, the "word" is a symbol. A symbol experienced and defined by an observer.

The word simply allows conscious perception. Before you can assign meaning (a word) to something, you have to have a language. You start with "feelings", then you learn how to make mental representations of what you experience within your perspective. God cannot exist before a possibility for interaction and a logic for that interaction to follow. Odds are, if there is a god, it evolved from the chaos ridden void. Out of nothing, something? No. Simply the possibility of it's existence led to it.