Source:Liahona The Direction of the Lord:JBMS 16:2:the grammatical elements used to form the name Liahona

"grammatical elements used to form the name Liahona....'to Yahweh is the whither' or, by interpretation, 'direction of-to the Lord.'"

"grammatical elements used to form the name Liahona....'to Yahweh is the whither' or, by interpretation, 'direction of-to the Lord.'"

The name Liahona, although it appears only once in the Book of Mormon text, has drawn the rapt attention of the curious and the learned. My contribution builds upon past efforts to explain the possible etymological meaning of the name Liahona. I offer what I argue to be a more plausible explanation than those of my predecessors in light of the Lehites' linguistic background. In fairness to past studies on this subject, I must mention that working with the Book of Mormon text in English only, and not with the text in its original language, makes the effort harder. The same can be said about the difficulty of working on the given names in English spellings rather than the originals. My approach is to transliterate back into the Hebraic idioms of the time of Lehi what I perceive that Joseph Smith saw or heard and dictated. Then I present the grammatical elements used to form the name Liahona, which I show to mean quite literally "to Yahweh is the whither" or, by interpretation, "direction of-to the Lord." —(Click here to continue)