Evidence# 463 | September 18, 2024

Book of Mormon Evidence: Name Letter Effect

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Scripture Central

Depiction of Joseph Smith. AI generated image via fromthedesk.org.

Abstract

In recent decades, the “name letter effect”—a tendency for individuals to prefer letters and sounds in their own names—has been a topic of interest in various fields of research. Exploratory studies of this phenomenon do not support the claim that Joseph Smith invented the names found in the Book of Mormon.

Some have claimed that the Book of Mormon is merely a work of fiction and that many of its unique names were invented by Joseph Smith. In recent years, the preferences for names held by writers of fiction has been the subject of research and analysis. One interesting phenomenon is known as the name letter effect.

Name Letter Effect

Coined in 1985 by Josef M. Nuttin Jr., the name letter effect refers to conscious or unconscious  preferences individuals have for certain letters (especially initials) and phonemes (vowel and consonant sounds) in their own names.1 Subsequent studies found evidence for the name letter effect to one degree or another in the selection of boyfriends, girlfriends, spouses, jobs, and places of residence, as well as in the naming of children and even in the aliases criminals may choose. Sometimes these choices seem deliberate, but research shows that very often they are unintentional. 2

Evidence of the name letter effect has also been identified in the works of prominent 19th-century authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Washington Irving, Charles Dickens, and Edgar Allen Poe.3 One might therefore wonder if this tendency also turns up in the Book of Mormon, which could possibly support the theory of it being a fictional work.

Name Letter Effect (Hawthorne).jpg
Nathaniel Hawthorne. Brady-Handy Photograph Collection/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

In a recent study, researchers Sharon Black, Brad Wilcox, Wendy Baker-Smemoe, and Bruce L. Brown attempted to answer this question. They found that although the initials and sounds of the letters in Joseph Smith’s name are common in English, they have a statistically low rate of occurrence among unique Book of Mormon names.4

Joseph Smith’s Name and Book of Mormon Names

Out of the 337 proper names in the Book of Mormon, 149 are biblical names. Sometimes the Book of Mormon directly references biblical characters, which often occurs in biblical quotations. These names weren’t included in the study. Nor were place names (e.g., Bountiful, Nahom) or group names (e.g. Nephites, Lamanites). This left 162 names that refer to unique characters in the Book of Mormon. As for spelling, the study relied on the best available evidence from the Book of Mormon’s earliest manuscripts.5

Naturally, not all of these names show up with equal prominence in the Book of Mormon. Only 17 percent belong to major characters (some of which, like Nephi, refer to multiple persons). Notably, none of these prominent names include the initial letters in Joseph Smith’s name (J or S). In fact, J is only found in 4 out of the 423 consonant sounds in the unique non-biblical Book of Mormon names (0.95%), while S is only found in 7 out of 423 (1.66%).

The next area of investigation involved potential sound correspondences. The authors first broke down Joseph Smith according to the phonetic pronunciation of each letter. They then compared these letters/sounds with the unique corpus of Book of Mormon names.

For Joseph they concluded that “the consonant sounds in this name account for only about 3.5 to 5.5 percent of the overall 423 consonant sounds used in the unique names.” In addition, “Neither vowel in the name represents more than 10 percent of the overall 375 vowel sounds.” While the letters/sounds in Smith turned up with greater regularity, they were also “not represented extensively in the unique Book of Mormon names.” Moreover, the rates of sounds corresponding to Smith in unique Book of Mormon names “are all much lower than the natural occurrences of these sounds in English generally.”6

The authors of the study concluded that “if Joseph Smith was a novelist, he seems to have (actively or passively) managed to avoid using his own name sounds in the Book of Mormon characters” to any significant degree.7

Possible Name Letter Effect from Other LDS and Non-LDS Writers

As assessed by Black et al., the strongest potential influence on naming patterns in the Book of Mormon, apart from Joseph’s own name, would likely have been those he encountered at home or in his immediate environment. Among Joseph’s brothers (Alvin, Hyrum, William, Samuel Harrison, and Don Carlos), only the name Samuel occurs in the text. The significance of this correspondence is somewhat limited, however, since this is also a biblical name.

In order to measure potential influences of other nineteenth century names on the Book of Mormon, the researchers examined early nineteenth century U.S. census records and identified the 100 most common names. Of these, 38 are also found in the Bible, while only 5 of these 38 are also found in the Book of Mormon. The authors reasoned that “although 33 additional biblical names would have been part of Joseph Smith’s daily experience,” according to this measure, “they (and obvious adaptations of them) did not appear in ‘his’ manuscript. Neither did the sounds of the most common names recorded in the census when the book was being produced.”8

The research team also considered the possible influence of the names of several prominent and influential Latter-day Saint converts who some critics have suggested may have been responsible for the origin of the Book of Mormon. The total consonant and vowel sounds in the names of Oliver Cowdery, Parley P. Pratt, and Sidney Rigdon were compared with the Book of Mormon names, which achieved the following results:

Consonant Sounds

  • Oliver Cowdery (28.1 percent)
  • Parley P. Pratt (30.3 percent)
  • Sidney Rigdon (63.6 percent)

Vowel Sounds

  • Oliver Cowdery (23.5 percent)
  • Parley P. Pratt (22.4 Percent)
  • Sidney Rigdon (28.8 percent)

According to Ernest L. Abel, a prominent authority on the name letter effect, “Authors who invent character names will be influenced by the name letter effect to one degree or another—especially those who are unaware of the effect. A good guideline to use is that when 50% or more of both consonants and vowels found within the author’s name appear in character names you can be confident that it is not by chance that the name letter effect is present.”9 While Rigdon’s percentage for consonant sounds is the highest (63.6%), his percentage for vowel sounds is quite low (28.8%). Consequently, this data does not support the theory that these men authored the Book of Mormon.

Name Letter Effect (Rigdon).jpg
Sidney Rigdon. Image via missouriencyclopedia.org. 

The researchers then analyzed the names of two individuals—Ethan Smith and Solomon Spalding –who weren’t Latter-day Saints but who have also been suspected of influencing the Book of Mormon’s contents. For Ethan Smith, the matching of consonants (45%) and vowels (25.6%) with Book of Mormon names were both statistically insignificant. The same is true for Solomon Spalding, with consonants (45.2%) and vowels (18.7%) both falling below the 50% threshold suggested by Abel. In contrast, Spalding’s name matches much more strongly with names from his own book called Manuscript Story or Manuscript Found, with consonants (65%) and vowels (57.9%) both above the 50% level.

The researchers concluded that “neither Joseph Smith’s contemporary LDS writers nor his contemporary outside clergymen/authors seem to have left their name letter imprint on Book of Mormon names.”10

Conclusion

Research on the name letter effect offers an intriguing avenue to examine the names found in the Book of Mormon in light of claims that challenge its historical origins. According to Black et al., “The striking number and variety of Book of Mormon names appear to us to be considerably beyond the experience of the possible ‘unconscious egotism’ that might be attributed to Joseph Smith. If Joseph Smith was a fiction writer, he was certainly an atypical one, whose lexicon of names cannot be explained in terms of name letter effect.”11

Note that the authors of the study are careful not to overclaim the significance of their findings.  “That the Book of Mormon does not follow these linguistic or biographic trends does not prove it is not a work of fiction,” write Black et al.12 It always possible, for instance, that the name letter effect simply wasn’t a tendency of Joseph Smith or other proposed 19th century authors.

That being said, the fact that this common naming tendency doesn’t manifest for any of the text’s purported 19th-century authors is not insignificant. While not conclusive, this data adds to numerous other lines of evidence that, in one way or another, favor the Book of Mormon’s authenticity or push back against claims of forgery.

Further Reading
Endnotes

 

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