“I Am Called Mormon”
This is the first time in the abridgment of the large plates that Mormon identifies himself by name. (His name appears in the Words of Mormon, but that book is at the end of the small plates of Nephi- see Commentary 2:121-22.) The name of Mormon’s father was Mormon (see Mormon 1:5), and chronologically the first Book of Mormon mention of the name occurrs about four hundred and fifty years before his birth, when Alma is teaching his followers at the “waters of Mormon,” in the land of Mormon (see Mosiah 18:30). The Prophet Joseph Smith linked the word Mormon with the meaning “more good” (see Teachings, p. 300). For a look at what the name Mormon has come to mean in this last dispensation, see President Gordon B. Hinckley, Ensign, November 1990, pp. 51-54.
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