Theodore Schroeder argues that Solomon Spaulding came up with the name Moroni.
Theodore Schroeder, Authorship of the Book of Mormon (Worcester, MA: American Journal of Psychology, 1919), 9
Dr. Prince makes much of names in his argument. Thus true to his own psychologic predisposition he cannot allow any other origin for the name Maroni except that same old anti-masonry-Morgan complex. In the light of the historical evidence of the plagiarism of the Book of Mormon from Spaulding's "Manuscript Found" another possible explanation suggests itself. Spaulding was a clergyman with two degrees from Amherst College. He must have known something of history and Latin and the use of reference books. If such a person had been seeking for the names of persons which were to be used in fiction as emigrants to prehistoric America he might have easily found and appropriated the name " Morone or Moroni " from the Italian where it distinguishes several prominent citizens. One of the persons who made the name of Moroni famous was a Romanist cardinal who suffered imprisonment for heresy under Pope Paul IV. It is quite possible that Spaulding, the heretical backsliding clergyman found something attractive in the life of Cardinal Morone or Moroni, and that this induced him to select that name for some of the characters of his story, and particularly as the name of an angel who showed where the ancient record of Mormon was buried, on the basis of which Spaulding thought (according to preserved evidence) to establish a new religion, to show the absurdity of all religions. Of course I do not know that this is the true explanation of the use of that name. But I will say that in the light of the historic evidence of Spaulding's contribution to the contents of the Book of Mormon this seems to me a better supported explanation than that Smith coined the name in consequence of a subconscious Morgan-Anti-Masonic complex. Other names in the Book of Mormon can be similarly explained. Furthermore it seems to me that the special character of the variations used in similar Mormon names find at least plausible explanation in Spaulding's study of Latin. That I must not discuss at this time.