The editors for the 1920 LDS edition replaced the past-tense form gave with named, probably because the use of the verb give here seems inappropriate or misleading. However, this use of the verb give is not a mistake. Instead, the particular meaning of give here is no longer current in English. Diane DeFord Lillie, a student in my winter 1994 Book of Mormon textual criticism class, discovered that the Oxford English Dictionary lists a definition for give (namely, definition 25) that reads ‘represent, describe, portray, report’. Identified in the OED as “now rare”, this meaning has citations mostly from the 1600s, but there is one from the 19th century (here I regularize the spelling and ignore the punctuation):
So the original text for Alma 46:17 means that Moroni described the whole land as “a chosen land and the land of liberty”. The verb name, on the other hand, implies an action on Moroni’s part, as if Moroni himself declared that this land was a chosen land. Elsewhere in the Book of Mormon, it is clear that the Lord himself is responsible for this designation:
A verb like name and others like call and declare involve an action on the part of the subject. Such verbs are called performatives (as with the verbs pronounce and sentence in the sentences “I now pronounce you man and wife” and “I sentence you to life imprisonment”). The verbs listed in the OED under definition 25 (represent, describe, portray, and report) generally do not involve such an overt act on the part of the speaker and therefore more accurately represent the original meaning of give here in Alma 46:17. The critical text will accept the original verb form gave in this passage.
Summary: Restore in Alma 46:17 the original past-tense verb form gave, which here means something like ‘described’ or ‘portrayed’, a nonperformative meaning that was prevalent in the 1600s.