On the name of the Church and how “Mormon” was initially a derogatory term, one non-LDS scholar wrote the following in 2016, two years before the Church's attempt to move away from the use of "Mormon" as a nickname:
It is important to understand that "Mormons" is an external label, derived from one of the key documents, the Book of Mormon (in the following abbreviated as "BoM"), published in March 1830, which was in the past often meant and taken as derogatory, as was its variant "Mormonites". When the church was organized in April 1830, its members called themselves "Church of Christ", following a verse from the BoM (3 Nephi 27:8); cf. [Dan Vogel, Early Mormon Documents, volume 1, p. 92 Fn 82]. Unfortunately other movements, such as the Campbellites, also laid claim to that semantic space; the self-description of practicing members as simply the "Saints" has the same problem. To avoid confusion, the name was extended to "Church of the Latter Day Saints" in 1834 and to "Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints" (LDS for short) in 1838; cf. [H Michael Marquardt and Wesley Walters, Inventing Mormonism, p. 156]. In the present age, members seem to have come to terms with this label, if the name of the world renowned Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the website mormon.org (visited April 17th, 2014) are any indication. (Robert Christian Kahlert, Salvation and Solvency: The Socio-Economic Policies of Early Mormonism [Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte 133; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016], 1 n. 2)
For more on the name of the Church and use of "Mormon" in the early 19th century onwards, see:
Stephen Smoot, A "Mormon" By Any Other Name?
See also my blog post:
