All cultures commonly borrow familiar words from their cultural views and apply them to unfamiliar items in new situations, scenarios, or cultures. The word hippopotamus, for example, is Greek and means “river horse.” The hippo is not a horse, but the Greeks applied the term to the hippo because it was, in some ways, like a horse. When the Spaniards encountered the Aztec weapon macuahuitl (a wooden club laced with obsidian), they called it a “sword.” The macuahuitl is not a sword, but as far as the Spaniards were concerned, it functioned like a sword. So likewise, the Interpreter and Joseph’s seer stone were not the Urim and Thummim. To Joseph and his LDS contemporaries, however, they seemed to operate like the Urim and Thummim.

There is nothing inherently wrong with using familiar terms to describe foreign objects, events, places, people, animals, etc. If you go on a modern cruise, you might set “sail” near sunset even though the cruise ship has no sails. Your computer “save” icon may depict a floppy disk, although computers today do not use floppy disks. Is it wrong to refer to Roman “soldiers” knowing that “soldier” is a French word that was not created for at least six hundred years after Roman soldiers existed?