Book of Mormon Names

[_ajax18]

Does anyone have a link where researchers have found of 18th and 19th century books that use names found in the Book of Mormon, besides the Bible obviously?

[_Dr. Shades]

I don't know which book it's in, but this may be the map to which you're referring:

[_ajax18]

Thanks Dr. Shades. I considered showing my father, but I doubt he'd appreciate it much.

[_Physics Guy]

The standard Mormon rebuttal to this map makes a fair point that the locations of Book of Mormon places are shown all wrong in it. Jacobugath is supposed to be way up north, not down south, and so on.

So in fact Smith did not just copy-paste the map of his own region and change a few syllables. Suggesting that he did was overplaying the skeptical hand, and pushing it too far like that unfortunately tends to obscure the more serious point that a lot of Book of Mormon place names sound suspiciously like slight alterations of place names that Smith would have known.

There's no clear reason why he would have to copy a real-world map. Tolkien found no need to make Middle-Earth by renaming the towns of Oxfordshire; he was capable of keeping an entirely fictional geography straight, as he wrote about it, by just making a sketch map.

Coming up with fictional place names that sound good, on the other hand, isn't easy. Nobody would have watched Dorothy travel to see the Wizard of Blaws. Leaning a little on real-world places is a natural temptation when you have to come up with a whole bunch of place names at once. Did Smith do that? Maybe.

[_DoubtingThomas]

Let's not lower our standards. The map theory is complete garbage.

[_Brackite]

Lehi is from the Old Testament, Judges 15:9,14 and 19.
Nephi is from the King James Version of the Apocrypha, II Maccabees 1:36.
Enos is taken from Genesis 4:26.
Zenos was in use prior to the Book of Mormon as a person's name. Zenos Riggs is listed in the 1873 Hanover, New Jersey census. Zenos Gurley, Sr., was born in 1801 at Bridgewater, New York, and later joined Mormonism. There is also Zenas in the New Testament, Titus 3:13.

http://www.utlm.org/onlineresources/bomnames.htm

"The Apocrypha was included in the King James Version of 1611, but by 1629 some English Bibles began to appear without it, and since the early part of the 19th century it has been excluded from almost all protestant Bibles... it is apparent that controversy was still raging as to the value of the Apocrypha at the time the Prophet began his ministry." (Mormon Doctrine, 1979, page 41)

http://www.utlm.org/newsletters/no89.htm

[_ajax18]

Lehi is from the Old Testament, Judges 15:9,14 and 19.
Nephi is from the King James Version of the Apocrypha, II Maccabees 1:36.
Enos is taken from Genesis 4:26.
Zenos was in use prior to the Book of Mormon as a person's name. Zenos Riggs is listed in the 1873 Hanover, New Jersey census. Zenos Gurley, Sr., was born in 1801 at Bridgewater, New York, and later joined Mormonism. There is also Zenas in the New Testament, Titus 3:13.

http://www.utlm.org/onlineresources/bomnames.htm

"The Apocrypha was included in the King James Version of 1611, but by 1629 some English Bibles began to appear without it, and since the early part of the 19th century it has been excluded from almost all protestant Bibles... it is apparent that controversy was still raging as to the value of the Apocrypha at the time the Prophet began his ministry." (Mormon Doctrine, 1979, page 41)

http://www.utlm.org/newsletters/no89.htm

Brackite you are the king of research. Thank you so much for finding that.

[_Brackite]

Brackite you are the king of research. Thank you so much for finding that.

You are welcome, ajax!!

[_Fence Sitter]

Funny how "NHM" has to be Nahom but the rest of the name similarities are just a coincidence.

[_ajax18]

I brought up the fact that Nephi wasn't an original name to my mother an things couldn't have gone worse. She just launched into a verbal assault on my character. She can't bear the though that I won't be with them in eternity. It really hurts for her to take it this way because I'm not the type to be disloyal to my family. No reasoning, just raw emotion from her. You can't have God and the afterlife if you don't believe the Mormon message according to her.

I have to admit the pressure to conform in beliefs is immense. It never really was my decision. It hurts like hell and I'm an independent adult. Imagine when I was dependent upon them for everything.