Abstract: In 2013 we published a study examining names from Solomon Spalding’s fictional manuscript, J. R. R. Tolkien’s fictional works, and nineteenth-century US census records. Results showed names created by authors of fiction followed phonemic patterns that differed from those of authentic names from a variety of cultural origins found in the US census. The current study used the same methodology to compare Book of Mormon names to the three name sources in the original study and found that Book of Mormon names seem to have more in common with the patterns found in authentic names than they do with those from fictional works. This is not to say that Book of Mormon names are similar to nineteenth- century names, but rather that they both showed similar patterns when phonotactic probabilities were the common measure. Of course, many more invented names and words from a variety of authors and time periods will need to be analyzed along with many more authentic names across multiple time periods before any reliable conclusions can be drawn. This study was exploratory in nature and conducted to determine if this new line of research merits further study. We concluded it does.





In 2013, we published a study in Names, the journal of the American Names Society, exploring whether or not authors could be identified by phonoprints in their characters’ names.1 A phonoprint is like [Page 106]a wordprint except it describes how authors put sounds together, while wordprints describe how they put words together. In the past, wordprints have been used to verify a writer’s identity.2 Wordprints are, however, more tentative and difficult to define than fingerprints.3 Nevertheless, they are used regularly in verifying authorship of documents4 and have surfaced even in terse notes sent digitally such as through instant messaging and Twitter.5 We began to wonder if authors put sounds together in identifiable ways when they invent names. Could they have unique phonoprints as well?
Traditionally, words have been seen as the smallest building blocks over which authors have some freedom to choose. Our new line of research reduces the fundamental unit of text to the phonemic level, and despite the fact that authors have fewer sounds with which to create words than they have words with which to create prose and poetry, we proceeded to compare phonemic patterns.