In 1999, the Zarahemla Research Foundation (RLDS) finished an exhaustive review of all known manuscripts and editions of the Book of Mormon in order to restore the text "to its purity." The result was the Restored Covenant Edition of the Book of Mormon. One of their "restorations" involves the proper name "Corianton" (Alma 31:6), which they have changed to read "Coreanton." [Zarahemla Research Foundation, "Selected Concordance" in The Book of Mormon: Restored Covenant Edition, p. 878]
Note* This must be considered tentative subject to the verification of Royal Skousen, director of the Book of Mormon manuscript project, who will not comment at this time relative to such changes. [Personal communication, 11/22/1999]
“The Names of Those Whom He Took with Him Were Shiblon and Corianton”
In Alma 31:7-8 we find that in Alma's missionary journey to preach among the dissident Zoramites, he took with him younger sons Shiblon and Corianton, but not his eldest son Helaman. With respect to the names of Alma's sons, Gordon Thomasson hypothesizes that in order to facilitate editorial condensation of the Nephite records, Mormon used a process of metonymic naming wherein he substituted symbolically or historically "loaded" names for the actual personal names of given individuals.
Metonymy or metonymic naming involves "naming by association," a metaphoric process of linking two concepts or persons together in such a way as to tell us more about the latter by means of what we already know about the former. (pp. 8, 10). The names Shiblon and Corianton are Jaredite names, and as Dr. Hugh Nibley and Benjamin Urrutia have pointed out, Jaredite names tend to appear in the Nephite record at those times when severe problems arise in Nephite society. Thus the question can be posed, If Alma the younger's apostasy took place some time after his marriage, could this explain why he gave Jaredite names to his younger sons Shiblon and Corianton? In contrast, Alma named his first son Helaman, apparently after his father's first convert. So again, Are the names of Alma's younger sons (Shiblon and Corianton) a reflection of his rebellion at the time? Or were these names put in the abridgment after-the-fact by Mormon as a reflection of the kind of life Alma the younger was leading and brought his younger sons into before he repented? [Gordon C. Thomasson, "What's in a Name? Book of Mormon Language, Names, and [Metonymic] Naming," in Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, Volume 3, Number 1 (Spring 1994), pp. 8, 10, 14]