How is the battle against the word “Mormon” going?

[I Have Questions]

Jana Riess has been having a look at how Nelson’s crusade against the M word has been going…

Three years after Russell M. Nelson issued his 2018 edict that members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — and everyone else — essentially purge “Mormon” from their lexicon, writer and researcher Jana Riess analyzed how that directive had affected social media trends.

Were people searching for “Mormon” less and “Latter-day Saint” (the church’s preferred shorthand for members) more?

In particular, Riess, a Latter-day Saint and Religion News Service columnist, looked at Google Trends for relevant data.

“Search engine history is not a perfect measure of language usage, but it’s useful,” she wrote in 2021. “And, yes, we have seen a reduction in searches using the word ‘Mormon’ in the United States over the past five years.”

That was not, Riess concluded, because “Latter-day Saint” was on the rise.

“There’s been no corresponding uptick of interest in Latter-day Saint,” she wrote. “Instead, there’s been an apparent overall decrease in searches for anything to do with the church or its members.”

So apathy towards the topic of Mormonism has had a bigger impact than Nelson trying to demand that everyone outside of Mormonism remove the term from their active lexicon.

Now, let’s fast-forward four years. Nelson died on Sept. 27, 2025, and Dallin H. Oaks took over as prophet-president a couple of weeks later. It is worth asking again: Has Nelson’s initiative altered search habits now?

(Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)

Riess again looked at Google Trends and found that the searches for “Mormon” vastly outnumber the ones for “Latter-day Saint” over time, she said, “and this hasn’t changed in a significant way in the last two decades.”

In January 2018, when Nelson took office, the ratio between Mormon and Latter-day Saint, she noted, “was 33 to 1.” In November 2025, Riess said, “it was 73 to 1, driven by so much pop culture interest in ‘Mormon.’”

Looking at the past 18 months, searches for “Mormon” spiked in September 2024, May 2025 and November 2025, she observed. “All three of those weeks were, you guessed it, the new seasons for “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.”

In the end, Riess explained, Google search data does not reflect that the campaign to eliminate use of “Mormon” has worked — at least so far.

“It’s possible that ‘Latter-day Saint’ will eventually gain traction if the church continues to push hard for it,” she said. “But, in the meantime, it’s intriguing that the church’s tremendous and expensive push into social media advertising to attract converts often doesn’t mention either term.”

That is an interesting observation. That the SLC LDS Church is trying to Trojan Horse its way into people’s lives. What is it that the Church says about hiding behind a mask, and misleading by omission?

[Res Ipsa]

Church leadership is indistinguishable from a bunch of guys making it up as they go along. I’m old enough to remember the “Golden Questions:” What do you know about the Mormon Church? Would you like to know more? That’s what we were taught to ask friends, co-workers, seatmates on airplanes, etc.

We are all old enough to remember the Mormon Tabernacle Choir — Missionary representatives of the Church in Temple Square and around the world.

Everyone here remembers the “I’m a Mormon” campaign run by the church itself.

And then, with only a change in geriatric leadership, the entire membership has to perform a 180 pivot of mental gymnastics and believe that referring to the church by the nickname it has embraced and promoted for decades was of the devil? Did this just slip God’s mind for over 50 years?

[malkie]

Church leadership is indistinguishable from a bunch of guys making it up as they go along. I’m old enough to remember the “Golden Questions:” What do you know about the Mormon Church? Would you like to know more? That’s what we were taught to ask friends, co-workers, seatmates on airplanes, etc.

We are all old enough to remember the Mormon Tabernacle Choir — Missionary representatives of the Church in Temple Square and around the world.

Everyone here remembers the “I’m a Mormon” campaign run by the church itself.

And then, with only a change in geriatric leadership, the entire membership has to perform a 180 pivot of mental gymnastics and believe that referring to the church by the nickname it has embraced and promoted for decades was of the devil? Did this just slip God’s mind for over 50 years?

A couple of small sections of the membership found their lives - suddenly, and apparently without preparation or warning of any sort - turned upside down.

Having been involved in the world of publication, and having had responsibility for the updating/staging/testing/golive process for a small section of my company's website, I can easily imagine the work it would have taken if, instead of incremental updates, I had been charged with rebranding that required changes in domain names - not just one domain, and not just one round of changes; and not just a cosmetic change in corporate identity standards.

For a "company" with a media and web presence as big as that of the church - perhaps someone with a greater depth and breadth of knowledge could estimate the amount of work needed.

On the plus side, I bet there was plenty of overtime for anyone who wanted it.

[Dr. Sunstoned]

The Mormon name was Nelson's pet peeve. He even tried to give a talk about it when Hinckley was alive, and Hinckley shut him down hard. Nelson fumed about that for decades. So one of the first things he did as the new president was address his pet peeve, and he even called it "revelation" and low-key "Satanic" so TBMs can't argue with him about it. But he is dead now, and we all know that a dead prophet has no honor in Mormon country.

All the money and time spent scrubbing websites, printed material, and renaming everything will be for naught. Five years from now, the usage frequency will be back up, and if anyone remembers Nelson at all, it will be in the context of "he was speaking as a man".

[I Have Questions]

The Mormon name was Nelson's pet peeve. He even tried to give a talk about it when Hinckley was alive, and Hinckley shut him down hard. Nelson fumed about that for decades. So one of the first things he did as the new president was address his pet peeve, and he even called it "revelation" and low-key "Satanic" so TBMs can't argue with him about it. But he is dead now, and we all know that a dead prophet has no honor in Mormon country.

All the money and time spent scrubbing websites, printed material, and renaming everything will be for naught. Five years from now, the usage frequency will be back up, and if anyone remembers Nelson at all, it will be in the context of "he was speaking as a man".

Nelson really had it in for Hinckley's legacy. Not only did he seek to pursue the word "Mormon", to put Hinckley's legacy firmly in the dust he was determined to out-announce Hinckley on temples. Going so far as to announce temples where no site or even country agreement had been reached. He brought forward as many announcements as he could to surpass Hinkley's record. It's clear Nelson had a Hinckley sized chip on his shoulder. It's more evidence that the Church doesn't teach Mormonism, it teaches <President's surname>ism. So Nelsonism has given way to Oaksism. That's the theology.