Item Detail
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28806
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0
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1
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English
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It Is OK Not to Have Every Answer : The Book of Mormon Onomastic Ending -(i)hah
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Journal of Book of Mormon Studies
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2009
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18
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1
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Provo, UT
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Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship
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48-55
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"In our search for understanding, it is often instructive to determine what something does not mean. This is the case with the ending on some Book of Mormon names, -(i)hah. Because one of the most common names ending with -(i)hah is Moronihah, the son of Moroni, it might be tempting to understand these names as patronymic; however, of eleven names with the suffix -(i)hah, Moronihah is the only occurrence in which the father is known. The case of the brothers Mathoni and Mathonihah also casts doubt on this interpretation. The suffix -(i)hah can also be interpreted as a shortened form of Jehovah, yhwh. For this to occur, however, -i(j)hah would have to switch to -(i)hah through metathesis, which is extremely rare in semitic languages. Among other arfuments against this understanding are that there are no instances in the corpus in which -(i)hah is used as a shortened form of Jehovah and, with one possible exception, no geographical name compounds with yhwh, as -(i)hah does in the Book of Mormon. Although this leaves the question currently unresolved, the use of sound methodology has helped to settle what -(i)hah is no, which will ultimately aid in determining what it is." [abstract provided]