Etymology

The name ALMA, as Hugh Nibley pointed out some years ago, is now attested in an undeniably HEBREW/Semitic context, namely, the letters of Bar Kokhba from the Second Jewish Revolt in Palestine around the year A.D. 132. Therein, the name, ALMA ben Yehudah, appears in a business document.

In LEHI's day the name would have been spelled with an initial ʿayin, ʿlm, not the aleph of the Bar Kokhba period. The HEBREW common noun ʿlm, meaning "youth" or "lad," occurs twice in the Old Testament, 1 Samuel 17:56 and 20:22. The King James of 1 Samuel 17:56 translates עֶלֶם as “stripling.” In its feminine form, ʿalmâ appears nine times in the Old Testament, where it means "a young woman (of marriageable age)," including the famous passage in Isaiah 7:14.

The form of ALMA in the Book of Mormon reflects the HEBREW segholate noun form, ʿelem, as in 1 Samuel 20:22, but with the addition of the hypocoristic ending —a. When an ending is added, the accent shifts and the original /a/ vowel of the segholate qatl form returns. (The pausal form, because of the shift in accent, also reveals the original /a/ vowel, e.g., as in the pausal form in 1 Samuel 17:56.)

Given the usage of ģlm in Ugaritic literature (ģlm is the spelling of the name before ʿ (ʿayin) and ģ (ģayin) fell together in HEBREW orthography) as an epithet, the significance of ALMA as a personal name becomes clear. In one of the more famous epics from Ugaritic, the hero, named KRT (pronounced either "Kirta" or "Keret") is called ģlm ʾl, "lad of [the god]El" (KTU 1.14.II.8-9). If the Book of Mormon person name is analogous to this epithet, then ALMA would probably mean exactly what the Ugaritic epithet meant, "lad of God," a rather appropriate meaning for both Book of Mormon prophets who bear this name, especially since ALMA, when first introduced, is called a "young man" (Mosiah 17:2, first noted by RFS). In this sense, ALMA would be analogous to the HEBREW geber, which means "man, hero," and which appears in names such as Gabriel, "hero/man of God."

In addition to its post-biblical attestation as a personal name in the Bar Kokhba letter, its use as an epithet in Ugaritic literature, and the biblical usage as a common noun, "youth, young man," the name is also attested in the Ebla cuneiform texts that predate the HEBREW Exodus from EGYPT by about a thousand years. There the name is written al6-ma, as would be expected in cuneiform.[

Of course, other etymologies are possible, though less likely. The Arabic root ʿalama / ʿalima, "knowing, erudite; distinguished; chief, chieftain," etc. (RFS and JAT), yields plausible meanings and may even contribute to a (as yet unrecognized) play on words. Also, ʾlm means "to bind" or "to be dumb" in HEBREW, and could possibly mean, with hypocoristic aleph ending, "He (God) is bound." However, this root is attested in HEBREW only in two oblique niphal and piel verbal forms, neither of which would allow the spelling as it appears in the Book of Mormon.