GID
| Lehite PN | 1. | Officer, 1st century BC (Alma 57:28; 58:23) |
| Lehite GN | 2. | City, ca. 67 BC (Alma 51:26; Helaman 5:15) |
Cf. the KJV GN Gidom = infinitive construct Hebrew gid‘ōm “they had been cut down,” with 3rd masculine plural suffix (Judges 20:45; JH),[1] and gidu, a village near Ebla (JAT).[2] This may simply be the mimated form of Hebrew gid‘ôn “Iconoclast, Destroyer, Slasher, Hacker, Hewer” (Judges 6:11– 8:35), which is the alternate name of Jeruba‘al.[3] The etymology remains obscure, though Hebrew gīd, “sinew,” is not impossible (see the “sinew” incident in Genesis 32) (JH). Nibley suggests a corruption of the Meroitic (i.e., post-LEHI, *Nubian/EGYPTIAN) names KIB and Keb.[4] If this name is related to the Book of Mormon names GIDDIANHI and GIDDONAH or GIDGIDDONAH, then the root would be *gdd or gdgd, respectively.
It would be a variant of gād, “luck, etc.” (See GAD above), though this seems less likely because the vowel quality of gād as a noun is phonemic. Even less likely is a derivation from the Hebrew PN GIDEON, though GID may be a hypocoristicon thereof (RFS). Cf. The SAMARIA ostraca seal PN gdyhw (ABM, 237), which as a hypocoristicon would be gd.
See GAD, AMGID, GIDDIANHI, GIDDONAH, GIDGIDDONAH, GIDGIDDONI.
