Scripture Study

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

1. James Williams, “The Law and the Book of Mormon,” Law Magazine and Review: A Quarterly Review of Jurisprudence 24 (1898–1899): 140; M. A. Sbresny, Mormonism: As It Is To-Day (Arthur H. Stockwell, 1911), 24–25; Charles A. Shook, Cumorah Revisited: “The Book of Mormon” and the Claims of the Mormons Re-examined from the Viewpoint of American Archaeology and Ethnology (Standard Publishing, 1910), 500. In addition to Shook, who says “Alma . . . is the Latin word for ‘benign,’” N. W. Green, Mormonism: Its Rise, Progress, and Present Condition (Hartford, CT: Belknap & Bliss, 1870), 418, may have had Alma in mind when claiming that some Book of Mormon names are of Latin origin, but he does not specify.

2. Hugh Nibley had heard this argument by 1973. Hugh Nibley, review of Bar-Kochba, by Yigael Yadin, BYU Studies 14, no. 1 (1973): 121, reprinted as “Bar-Kochba and the Book of Mormon,” in The Prophetic Book of Mormon (Deseret Book; FARMS, 1989), 281: “The name in the Book of Mormon that has brought the most derision on that book, and caused greatest embarrassment to the Latter-day Saints . . . is the simple and unpretentious Alma. Roman [Catholic] priests have found in this obviously Latin and obviously feminine name (who does not know that Alma Mater means fostering mother?) gratifying evidence of the ignorance and naivete of the youthful Joseph Smith—how could he have been simple enough to let such a thing get by?” Walter Martin, The Maze of Mormonism, rev. ed. (Vision House, 1978), 327: “Alma is supposed to be a prophet of God and of Jewish ancestry in The Book of Mormon. In Hebrew Alma means a betrothed virgin maiden—hardly a fitting name for a man.”

3. Robert McKay, “What Is the Gospel?,” Utah Evangel 31, no. 8 (August 1984): 4. See also John Smith, “That Man Alma,” Utah Evangel 33, no. 3 (April 1986): 2.

4. Gabriel Hughes, “What the Mormons Believe About Joseph Smith,” Pastor Gabe’s Old Blog, May 24, 2016, https://pastorgabehughes.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-following-is-first-chapter-of-book.html. See also Thomas J. Finley, “Does the Book of Mormon Reflect an Ancient Near Eastern Background?,” in The New Mormon Challenge: Responding to the Latest Defenses of a Fast-Growing Movement (Zondervan, 2002), 355: “Modern potential sources for the name Alma could be, among others, the phrase alma mater or even the transliterated Hebrew word for ‘virgin’ or ‘young woman.’”

5. Nibley, review of Bar-Kochba, 121; Nibley, Prophetic Book of Mormon, 282. See also Y. Yadin, “Expedition D—The Cave of Letters,” Israel Exploration Journal 12, nos. 3–4 (1962): 250, 253; Yigael Yadin, Bar-Kokhba: The Rediscovery of the Legendary Hero of the Second Jewish Revolt Against Rome (Random House, 1971), 176; Donald W. Parry, Preserved in Translation: Hebrew and Other Ancient Literary Forms in the Book of Mormon (Deseret Book; Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2020), 130, 134. Others have transliterated the name as Allima. See Stephen D. Ricks, Paul Y. Hoskisson, Robert F. Smith, and John Gee, Dictionary of Proper Names and Foreign Words in the Book of Mormon (Eborn Books; Interpreter Foundation, 2022), 18n49.

6. Neal Rappleye and Allen Hansen, “More Evidence for Alma as a Semitic Name,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 62 (2024): 417–419; L. Y. Rahmani, A Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries in the Collections of the State of Israel (Israel Antiquities Authority and Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1994), 107; Tal Ilan, Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity, Part I: Palestine, 330 BCE–200 CE (Mohr Seibeck, 2002), 361; Rachel Hachlili, Jewish Funerary Customs, Practices and Rites in the Second Temple Period (Brill, 2005), 221. Rahmani and Hachlili each render the name Illma, but it is identical, in Hebrew, to the one rendered Alma by Yadin. Hannah M. Cotton et al., eds., Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinae, vol. I: Jerusalem, part 1: 1–704 (De Gruyter, 2010), 292–293, note that either Illma or Alma are possible.

7. Terrence L. Szink, “Further Evidence of a Semitic Alma,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 8, no. 1 (1999): 70; Terrence L. Szink, “The Personal Name ‘Alma’ at Ebla,” Religious Educator 1 (2000): 53–56. Szink notes, “Most likely the name al₆-ma at Ebla is used to identify a male, there being few female merchants at Ebla.”

8. L. Y. Rahmani, “A Hoard of Alexander Coins from Tel Tsippor,” Schweizer Münzblätter 16, no. 64 (1966): 131, 133. See also Rappleye and Hansen, “More Evidence for Alma,” 416.

9. Paul Y. Hoskisson, “What’s in a Name? Alma as a Hebrew Name,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 7, no. 1 (1997): 72–73; Ricks et al., Dictionary of Proper Names, 17–18. Hugh Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Mormon (Deseret Book; FARMS, 1988), 76, also suggested that the name Alma could mean “young man.”

10. Alma 37:35, emphasis added; see also 36:3; 38:2; 39:10.

11. Matthew L. Bowen, “Striking While the Irony Is Hot: Hebrew Onomastics and Their Function Within the Book of Mormon Text,” in Perspectives on Latter-day Saint Names and Naming: Names, Identity, and Belief, ed. Dallin D. Oaks, Paul Baltes, and Kent Minson (Routledge, 2023), 233–234. See also Matthew L. Bowen, “‘And He Was a Young Man’: The Literary Preservation of Alma’s Autobiographical Wordplay,” Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship 30, no. 4 (2010): 2–3; Matthew L. Bowen, “Alma—Young Man, Hidden Prophet,” Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture 19 (2016): 343–353, reprinted in Matthew L. Bowen, Name as Key-Word: Collected Essays on Onomastic Wordplay and the Temple in Mormon Scripture (Interpreter Foundation; Eborn Books, 2018), 91–100; Matthew L. Bowen, “‘He Did Go About Secretly’: Additional Thoughts on the Literary Use of Alma’s Name,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 27 (2017): 197–212, reprinted in Matthew L. Bowen, Ancient Names in the Book of Mormon: Toward a Deeper Understanding of a Witness of Christ (Interpreter Foundation; Eborn Books, 2023), 233–245.

12. Daniel C. Peterson, “Is the Book of Mormon True? Notes on the Debate,” in Book of Mormon Authorship Revisited: The Evidence for Ancient Origins, ed. Noel B. Reynolds (FARMS, 1997), 146.

13. This was first pointed out, in print, by apologist Kevin L. Barney, “A More Responsible Critique,” FARMS Review 15, no. 1 (2003): 128. In recent years, critics online have taken to using this information to claim Joseph Smith could have been familiar with the name as a male name. See the discussion in Daniel C. Peterson, “Does the Name ‘Alma’ Challenge the Historicity of the Book of Mormon?,” Meridian Magazine, August 2019.

14. Barney, “More Responsible Critique,” 128n54.

15. Rappleye and Hansen, “More Evidence for Alma,” 423.

16. Rappleye and Hansen, “More Evidence for Alma,” 423–425.

17. Bowen, “Alma—Young Man, Hidden Prophet,” 343.