The Name of the Church, and What to Call the Movement

Naming this tradition is itself a matter of some care. Scholars use "Latter Day Saint movement" (with a capital D and no hyphen) as an umbrella for the whole family of churches descended from Joseph Smith's 1830 church, which is the sense in which the atlas uses it here. The hyphenated form "Latter-day Saint" is the distinctive spelling of the largest body, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The words "Mormon" and "Mormonism," drawn from the Book of Mormon, have for nearly two centuries been the common outside names for the movement and its members.

In August 2018, following President Russell M. Nelson, that church issued revised style guidance asking that its full name be used, that "the Church" or "the Church of Jesus Christ" serve as shortened references, that members be called "Latter-day Saints" rather than "Mormons," and that the terms "Mormon" and "LDS" be retired as names for the church and its people. The guidance does not govern the other branches or the scholarly umbrella term, and the older names remain in wide historical and everyday use; the atlas records the church's preference while retaining "Mormonism" as a recognized alias. This paragraph reports the tradition's own stated wishes on the point.