MULOKI
| Lehite PN | 1. | Missionary to LAMANITES from ZARAHEMLA, ca. 90 BC (Alma 20:2; 21:Preface, 11) |
This entry is not finished
Etymology
Ariel Crowley appears to have been the first scholar to suggest that MULOKI is related to MULEK and that both derive from the HEBREW word mlk, “to rule, king” (“The Escape of Mulek,” Improvement Era, May 1955, p. 326, fn. 4). If all the vowels matched, it would be tempting to see this name as a gentilic of MULEK, but they do not. Promising is the biblical PN mlwky in the Ketiv, but the Qoreh is mlykw (Nehemiah 12:14).
Another biblical PN, Malluch, is similar to MULOKI. Perhaps it is best to assume the u to be a *shwa and the i as a hypocoristic ending, so that the name would originally have meant something like “rule of DN” or “counsel of DN” or even “DN rules” (JH).
Brian D. Stubbs[1] observes that the Uto-Aztecan Hopi noun mongi, mongwi, “chief,” may correspond to the PN MULOKI or to MULEK since the Proto-Uto-Aztecan /*u/ > Hopi /o/ and /*l/ > /n/ or /N/ (general nasal) in Northern-Uto-Aztecan, especially in a consonant cluster with k (*-lk- > *-Nk- > -ŋ- being common in Uto-Aztecan), then *mulki > Hopi moŋwi ‘leader, head, chief’ with residual rounding carried past the /-ŋ-/ makes something like Semitic muleki / mulki > Hopi moŋwi very plausible. Cognate with the Hopi term is Southern Paiute moi- ‘to lead, act as chief,’ whose nasalized vowels make it from *moŋi.
Cf. Book of Mormon MULEK, AMULEK, MELEK, AMALEKI, AMALICKIAH, AMLICI.
Variants
Deseret Alphabet: 𐐣𐐊𐐢𐐄𐐗𐐌 (mʌloʊkaɪ)
Notes
- ↑ Brian D. Stubbs, in an email communication with Paul Hoskisson, Stephen Ricks, and Robert Smith 15 March 2014.
