As a surname, Moroni is fairly common in Italy today. Few Italians lived in the United States during the early years of the nineteenth century, but since colonial times Americans had surnames Morone, Moroney, Morony, and Morroni. In its various derivations, Moroni as a surname refers to a man “with a dark or swarthy complexion. In this regard, FARMS writer Robert F. Smith noted that the “dark” association in the etymology of the name Moroni was “due to the dark color of the salamanders in Normandy.”

This emphasis on dark skin also connects with a magic incantation of spirits. The first metal plates mentioned in the ancient record were brass (1 Nep. 3:3), and an eighteenth-century book of Rosicrucianism stated that the number one, “engraven in Brasse, . . . bringeth a Spirit, in the shape of a black man standing, and cloathed in a white Garment, girdled about, of a great body.” Moroni was the name for such a swarthy man or dark-complexioned man.

“Maron” was connected to the religion of ancient Egypt, well-known by the 1820s as the source of ceremonial magic for Western civilization. An eighteenth-century book on mythology, Bell’s Pantheon, identified Maron as a servant of the Egyptian god Osiris. A brother of early Mormon apostles Orson and Parley P. Pratt owned a copy of “The Pantheon.” Maron was one of the holy names for conjuration according to the “Key of Solomon.” To the 1800s this handbook of ceremonial magic was widely circulated as a manuscript and rare book. Smith’s earliest autobiography (1832) spelled the angel’s name as “Maroni.”

However, similar names had only non-magic meaning in published literature available in the early 1800s. A book in Smith’s hometown library listed “Maronaea” as an ancient city of Thrace. In addition, an encyclopedia on sale near Smith’s home also identified “Maroni” as a river in Guinea, “Morona” as a river in South America, and “Morrone” as a town near Naples, Italy.