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Source:Ricks:Some Notes on Book of Mormon Names:Interpreter:4:Alma as a male name anciently
Alma appears as a male name in the third millennium BC from the archives a Ebla
Parent page: Book of Mormon/Anthropology/Language/Names
Alma appears as a male name in the third millennium BC from the archives a Ebla (located in Syria)
Stephen D. Ricks,
Although the female personal name Alma (from the Latin adjective almus, alma, almum, “nurturing, fostering,”) is popular in the Western tradition of naming, the male personal name Alma is of incontestable antiquity. The name appears at least eight times in documents dating from the late third millennium BC from the archives at Ebla (located in modern-day Syria).[1] It also occurs in the Bar Kokhba letters, dating from the period of the Second Jewish Revolt in AD 132–35.[2] It appears as Alma ben Yehudah (“Alma son of Judah”) in a business document and is written both ʾlmʾ and ʾlmh.[3]
Notes
- Jump up ↑ Terrence L. Szink, “The Personal Name ‘Alma’ at Ebla,” Religious Educator 1/1 (2000): 53–56; see also Szink, “New Light: Further Evidence of a Semitic Alma,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 8/1 (1999): 70.
- Jump up ↑ Yigael Yadin, Bar Kokhba: The Rediscovery of the Legendary Hero of the Last Jewish Revolt against Imperial Rome (Jerusalem: Steimatzky, 1971), 121.
- Jump up ↑ Stephen D. Ricks, "Some Notes on Book of Mormon Names," Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture 4 (2013): 155-160.