The "place which was called Nahom" may turn out to be a significant clue in tracing the journey of the Lehites from Jerusalem to Bountiful. Warren and Michaela Aston describe their attempts to discover the location of Nahom based on a place name of "Nehhm" found on a 1763 map (Aston and Aston, _In the Footsteps of Lehi_ Deseret Book Company, 1994, p. 5-6).
Using the possible Hebrew roots NH.M and NHM, they find:
"The first root, HM.M, has the basic meaning of "to comfort, console, to be sorry," son in Hebrew we see it used extensively in connection with mourning a death.. The second root, NHM, is also found in biblical Hebrew and means to "roar," "complain," or "be hungry." Similarly, in ancient Egyptian it refers to "roar, thunder, shout," which are similar to the Arabic meanings of "growl, groan roar, suffer from hunger, complain." This clear association with humber may well have reference to the fasting usually associated with mourning for the dead anciently.
It is hard to imagine any place-name that wold be more appropriate in view o what Nephi tells us happened there. Not only do the two roots of Nahom refer unquestionably to both mourning and consoling (and perhaps also to fasting) in connection with Ishmael's death and burial, but they seem to go still further and echo the complaining and the rebellion that followed his burial."(Aston and Aston, 1994, p. 12-13).
While the etymology is interesting, it is coincidental at best, since they make a point of noting that the name was probably present prior to the Lehite band arriving there (Aston and Aston, 1994, p. 10). Thus the actions of Ishmael's daughters might be appropriate and serendipitous, but could not be seen as causative had the place been named as Lehi named other locations.
In the Aston's descriptions, this differentiation between the location of the mourning and the location of a place of burial provides their answer. They note that the Book of Mormon does not state that Ishmael died there, but that he was buried there (Aston and Aston, 1994, p. 13). Thus the burial in a place called Nahom would be appropriate, and the mournings and murmurings poetically justified. In that sense, the name of the place and the events do take on the symbolic associations.
The Astons locate Nahom (Nehem) as tribal lands outside of modern Sana'a. "Since the Book of Mormon Nahom was a burial ground, we were excited to discover on a later visit to Sana'a that an ancient burial ground had recently been located in the hills of Nehem itself." (Aston and Aston, 1994, p. 19).