“Comparing Phonemic Patterns in Book Of Mormon Personal Names with Fictional And Authentic Sources”

Spirit Island, Alberta — This morning — Friday morning — we took a boat out to precisely this spot on Maligne Lake, in Jasper National Park. The tree-covered quasi-island in the center of this Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph is called “Spirit Island” these days, although apparently nobody really knows the origin of that name. It is sacred to the local indigenous people and access to it is forbidden except at certain times of the year and to those who have been invited. (Our group today was not.)

I’ve been on the road all day, so I’m a bit late in calling attention to the fact that, once again, Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship has published a new article:

Brad Wilcox, Bruce L. Brown, Wendy Baker-Smemoe, Sharon Black and Dennis L. Eggett, “Comparing Phonemic Patterns in Book of Mormon Personal Names with Fictional and Authentic Sources: An Exploratory Study”

Abstract: In 2013 we published a study examining names from Solomon Spalding’s fictional manuscript, J. R. R. Tolkien’s fictional works, and nineteenth-century US census records. Results showed names created by authors of fiction followed phonemic patterns that differed from those of authentic names from a variety of cultural origins found in the US census. The current study used the same methodology to compare Book of Mormon names to the three name sources in the original study and found that Book of Mormon names seem to have more in common with the patterns found in authentic names than they do with those from fictional works. This is not to say that Book of Mormon names are similar to nineteenth- century names, but rather that they both showed similar patterns when phonotactic probabilities were the common measure. Of course, many more invented names and words from a variety of authors and time periods will need to be analyzed along with many more authentic names across multiple time periods before any reliable conclusions can be drawn. This study was exploratory in nature and conducted to determine if this new line of research merits further study. We concluded it does.

The article represents Interpreter’s 366th consecutive week of publication; the Interpreter Foundation has existed for 367.5 weeks.

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The 21 July 2019 episode of the Interpreter Radio Show is now accessible online (at no charge and minus commercial breaks). In it, Steve Densley and Mike Parker discuss the Book of Abraham and the upcoming Come, Follow Me lesson #31:

Interpreter Radio Show — July 21, 2019

The Interpreter Radio (audio) Roundtable for Come, Follow Me New Testament Lesson 31, “The Power of God unto Salvation,” covering Romans 1-6, has also been extracted from the 21 July 2019 radio show as a stand-alone recording and, of course features Steve Densley and Mike Parker.

Audio Roundtable: Come, Follow Me New Testament Lesson 31 “The Power of God unto Salvation”

Posted from Canmore, Alberta, Canada