Why Are There Men Named Alma in the Book of Mormon?

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Scripture Central

Alma the Elder and Alma the Younger, as portrayed in the Book of Mormon Videos.

“But there was one among them whose name was Alma. . . . And he was a young man.” Mosiah 17:2

The Know

The use of the name Alma in the Book of Mormon has long been a point of criticism. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, some detractors began to identify the name Alma and others in the Book of Mormon as “philologically impossible,” unbiblical, and of Latin origin.1 By the mid-twentieth century, some critics were more specifically ridiculing the Book of Mormon for using Alma as a male name since both the Latin alma and the Hebrew ʿalmah are feminine forms and Alma is a common female name in modern times.2

For example, one anti-Mormon wrote, “In most of the United States, Alma is a woman’s name,” but in Utah, “only men are named Alma” because of the Book of Mormon. He then argued that Alma was the Hebrew word for “lass” or “young woman” and thus declared, “So Mormons who name their sons ‘Alma’ have actually named them ‘lass’ or ‘virgin’ or a young woman.”3 As recently as 2016, an anti-Mormon pastor wrote that Alma means “betrothed virgin” in Hebrew and “would not have been the name of a man.”4

Despite the persistence of this criticism, a Hebrew masculine name that can be translated as Alma has been known since the 1960s. As Hugh Nibley explained in 1973, during excavations of the so-called Cave of Letters in March 1961, archaeologist Yigael Yadin recovered a bundle of papyrus rolls that dated to around 135 AD. Among the papyri was a land deed of four men, one of whom was an “Alma son of Judah” (ʾlmʾ bn yhwdh).5 More recently, researchers have drawn attention to an inscription on an ossuary in Jerusalem dated to the first century AD that also mentions a “Judah son of Alma” (yhwdh bn ʾlmʾ).6

In addition to these two attestations from Hebrew documents, Terrance Szink has noted that a Semitic name transliterated as Alma is also found in documents from Ebla, an ancient kingdom in Syria dated to the third millennium BC.7 A similar male name, Almu (ʿlmw), was found in Nabatean inscriptions from the fourth century BC.8 Thus, Alma as a male Semitic name goes far back into antiquity.

Latter-day Saint scholars have suggested that the Book of Mormon name Alma is most likely based on the Hebrew root ʿlm, meaning “lad, youth, young man.” As Paul Y. Hoskisson proposed, it is likely a shortened form of a name meaning “young man of God.”9 A similar sounding verbal root means “to hide” or “to conceal” in Hebrew. Interestingly, Alma the Elder is first introduced as “one among [the priests of Noah] whose name was Alma. . . . And he was a young man, and he believed the words which Abinadi had spoken” (Mosiah 17:2; emphasis added). After Alma pled on Abinadi’s behalf, Noah “sent his servants after [Alma] that they might slay him,” so “he fled from before them and hid himself that they found him not. And he being concealed for many days did write all the words which Abinadi had spoken” (Mosiah 17:3–4; emphasis added).

Then, Alma the Younger was said to “go about secretly” in his activities destructive to the church his father led (Mosiah 27:10). Later in life, Alma the Younger admonished all his sons not to squander their youth as he had but instead to “learn wisdom in thy youth.”10 Matthew L. Bowen has persuasively argued that these and other similar references constitute conscious wordplays on the name Alma that appear throughout the accounts of both Alma the Elder and Alma the Younger.11

The Why

Once a point of ridicule, the name Alma has now become insightful evidence of the Book of Mormon’s authenticity. As Daniel C. Peterson has noted, “Although Joseph Smith, if he had known the word Alma at all, would have known it as a Latinate woman’s name, recently unearthed evidence that he could never have encountered demonstrates Alma to be an authentically ancient Semitic masculine personal name, just as the Book of Mormon presents it.”12

Some have since claimed that Alma was actually a well-known masculine name in the United States in the early nineteenth century based on online Family Search records.13 These records, however, are wildly inaccurate, and thus Kevin Barney wisely cautioned, “The male gender of these individuals has not yet been independently verified.”14

In fact, a recent study examined an online database with the records of forty-two men named Alma born between 1780 and 1820 who resided in upstate New York at some point in their lifetimes. It found that “roughly nine times out of ten, a ‘male’ Alma was actually a misgendered woman.”15 Furthermore, in three out of the four cases wherein the individual was actually male, their name was either misheard or miswritten, and other records confirm that they had more traditionally masculine names such as Almon, Alva, or Ahira. The sole remaining case was an immigrant for whom no other corroborating documentation could be found, leaving it uncertain whether the gender or name had been incorrectly recorded or whether the individual was even in the United States before 1830.16 If Alma was in fact an English masculine name in the early nineteenth century, it was a vanishingly rare one.

In contrast, Alma was a legitimate Semitic masculine name attested in multiple sources, and understanding its meaning in Hebrew provides insight into the Book of Mormon accounts of the prophetic ministry of Alma the Elder—a young man of God who, due to the risk to his life from King Noah, had to stay hidden and concealed during the early period of his ministry. As Bowen has noted, “Alma’s name was appropriate given the details of his life and . . . he lived up to the positive connotations latent in his name.”17

KnoWhy #760 | October 31, 2024

Why Are There Men Named Alma in the Book of Mormon?

The Know

The Why