The most likely etymology for the name Zoram is a third person singular perfect po?al form of the Semitic/Hebrew verb *zrm, with the meaning, He [God] has poured forth in floods. However, the name could also have been heard and interpreted as a theophoric -ram name, of which there are many in the biblical Hebrew onomasticon (Ram, Abram, Abiram, Joram/Jehoram, Malchiram, etc., cf. Hiram [Hyrum]/Huram). So analyzed, Zoram would connote something like the one who is high, the one who is exalted or even the person of the Exalted One [or high place]. This has important implications for the pejoration of the name Zoram and its gentilic derivative Zoramites in Alma’s and Mormon’s account of the Zoramite apostasy and the attempts made to rectify it in Alma 31-35 (cf. Alma 38-39). The Rameumptom is also described as a high stand or a place for standing, high above the head (Heb. ram; Alma 31:13) – not unlike the great and spacious building (which stood as it were in the air, high above the earth; see 1 Nephi 8:26) – which suggests a double wordplay on the name Zoram in terms of ram and Rameumptom in Alma 31. Moreover, Alma plays on the idea of Zoramites as those being high or lifted up when counseling his son Shiblon to avoid being like the Zoramites and replicating the mistakes of his brother Corianton (Alma 38:3-5, 11-14). Mormon, perhaps influenced by the Zoramite apostasy and the magnitude of its effects, may have incorporated further pejorative wordplay on the Zoram-derived names Cezoram and Seezoram in order to emphasize that the Nephites had become lifted up in pride like the Zoramites during the judgeships of those judges. The Zoramites and their apostasy represent a type of Latter-day Gentile pride and apostasy, which Nephi, Mormon, and Moroni took great pains to warn against.
