Fun Facts

Fun Facts About Our Onomasticon

• The Book of Mormon contains 337 proper names and 21 gentilics (or analogous forms) based on proper names. Included in this count are names that normally would not be called proper, such as kinds of animals, if they appear as transliterations in the English text and not as translations. Conversely, proper names that appear only in translation are not included, such as Bountiful and Desolation. Of these 337 proper names, 188 are unique to the Book of Mormon, while 149 are common to the Book of Mormon and the Bible. If the textual passages common to the Book of Mormon and the Bible are excluded, 53 names occur in both books.

• Transliterated Book of Mormon nouns do not begin with the letters F, Q, V, W, X, or Y, and no such nouns contain those letters, except in the following cases:
  • F only appears singly in one such noun which is familiar from the KJV (LUCIFER).
  • F otherwise only appears doubled inside such nouns (ZENIFF, ZIFF).
  • V only appears inside such nouns which are familiar from the KJV (EVE, LEVI).
  • W only appears inside one such noun which is familiar from the KJV (JEW, JEWS).
  • Y only appears inside such nouns which are familiar from the KJV (MARY, SYRIA, TIMOTHY).
• The Lehite-Mulekite names often show greatest affinity with Semitic languages (CWHN 6:281-94). For instance, Abish and Abinadi resemble ab, father, names in Hebrew; Alma appears in a Bar Kokhba letter (c. A.D. 130) found in the Judean desert; Mulek could be a diminutive of West Semitic mlk, king; Omni and Limhi appear to have the same morphology as Old Testament Omri and Zimri; Jershon is remarkably close to a noun form of the Hebrew root yrs (see below). Some Lehite-Mulekite names resemble Egyptian: Ammon, Korihor, Pahoran, and Paanchi (CWHN 5:25-34). Jaredite names exhibit no consistently obvious linguistic affinity.
• Scholars working on this project have connected Book of Mormon names to Hebrew, Aramaic, Egyptian ______________