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by gjm11 2163 days ago
The trouble is that "saints" or "Saints" already has a meaning, which is not "members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints".

(In fact, it has multiple long-standing meanings, of which that is not one.)

I'm not saying you aren't entitled to call yourself that: of course you are. But you shouldn't expect other people to go along with it, any more than if you decided to call yourselves "Good People" or "Scientists" or "Turks".

Of course this problem occurs over and over, because groups of people love to give themselves self-congratulatory names. Sometimes they succeed: consider "Democrat[ic]" (in US politics) and "Orthodox" (in Christianity and in Judaism), for instance. But it makes me sad every time.

1 comments

Recently LDS was still the endonym. The exonym is almost universal for non-Mormons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exonym_and_endonym

Here's the new style guide for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints: https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/style-guide
The style guide says:

> When referring to Church members, the terms "members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints," "Latter-day Saints,” "members of the Church of Jesus Christ" and "members of the restored Church of Jesus Christ" are preferred. We ask that the term "Mormons" and "LDS" not be used.

... so in fact "Latter-Day Saints" is apparently perfectly OK, and "Saints" simpliciter isn't even one of the options they mention.

(But of course this is a guide for those associated with the CoJCoLDS, not an attempt to legislate what language others should use. I don't think you're likely to have much luck getting anyone else to refer to the doctrine and practices of the CoJCoLDS as "the restored gospel of Jesus Christ", for instance.)