Question: Could Joseph Smith have acquired the names "Moroni" and "Cumorah" from stories of Captain Kidd that he read in his youth?

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Question: Could Joseph Smith have acquired the names "Moroni" and "Cumorah" from stories of Captain Kidd that he read in his youth?

Captain William Kidd is known to have operated in the vicinity of the Comoro archipelago. One author notes that "During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Comoros, and especially Anjouan, were popular as both a hunting ground and headquarters for Indian Ocean pirates."

• Ex-Mormon Grant Palmer asserts that Joseph Smith acquired the names "Cumorah" and "Moroni" by reading stories of Captain Kidd in his youth. Palmer concludes that it is "reasonable to assert that Joseph Smith's hill in the "land of Camorah" [Comorah/Cumorah], "city of Moroni," and "land of Moroni/Meroni," is connected with the ilhas [islands] de Comoro"/"Camora," the Moroni/Meroni settlements, and these pirate adventures.
• Critic Ronald V. Huggins asserts that Captain Kidd was "hanged for crimes allegedly committed in the vicinity of Moroni on Grand Comoro."

The primary inspiration for stories about Captain Kidd, A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates, fails to mention the names "Comoro" and "Moroni/Meroni/Maroni"

The primary inspiration for Captain Kidd stories and legends, Charles Johnson's 1724 book A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates, fails to mention the names "Comoro" and "Moroni/Meroni/Maroni" in conjunction with Kidd's exploits. It is the responsibility of those who make this claim to produce some sort of documentary evidence that these names existed in stories that were available to Joseph Smith.

Positive evidence against this claim

The Book of Mormon Onomasticon project done through Brigham Young University gives compelling etymologies for the names Moroni and Cumorah.

"Other Mormon scholars who have written on this..."

It is claimed by some critics that "For some Mormon apologists, the evidence is so compelling that they have suggested that Lehi and his family may have encountered the Comoros islands on their initial voyage from the Arabian Peninsula to the western hemisphere, and that the Nephite civilization therefore mayhave retained a collective knowledge of the names of "Comors" and "Moroni".

This is in line with a Wikipedia article that reads "However, other Mormon authors have suggested that the ancestors of the Nephite people may have encountered the Comoros islands on their initial voyage from the Arabian Peninsula to the western hemisphere, and that the Nephite civilization therefore may have retained a collective knowledge of the names "Comoros" and "Moroni"

However, the two sources that are relied on to make this assertion both come from Book of Mormon Heartlanders Wayne May and W. Vincent Coon. Heartlanders are those that believe that the Book of Mormon took place in the "Heartland" of America which generally occupies the Eastern and Midwestern United States. The men use the port of "Meroni" to support the assertion that the Lehites came from the east through the Atlantic Ocean and landed somewhere on the Florida peninsula. This case is made without any textual evidence to support such--only the names of the places since they match, in some form, the Book of Mormon names. They start with the assumption that the Book of Mormon took place in North America and then work backwards. It is a biased conclusion and one that no critic should use in support of the Captain Kidd stories if attempting to make a valuable contribution to Book of Mormon studies.

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