In a Name (on little or no sleep)

Here are snippets from a conversation my roommate and I had while I tried to convince myself that "less than four hours of sleep is legit" and she tried to convince herself, "No, I really do need the next three hours to sleep" after coming back from her eight-hour shift at the hospital.  I'm putting quotes but I don't remember who said what.

"Do you think that they shortened names in the Book of Mormon for nicknames? I mean, sure, he's Jeffrey R. Holland in the scriptures, but he's Jeff in real life."

"Yeah, we could shorten Nephi to just 'Neph'.  That's actually pretty awesome.  I want to name my kid Nephi so I can call him Neph."

"Yeah, I'm not naming any of my children Nephi.  Maybe my cat...er..."

"Lemuel could be shortened to 'Lem'.  Hahaha, Laman would be shortened to Lame-o!"

"Would we call Alma 'Al'?"

"How do you ever shorten Amaleki?  If you call him 'Amal' it's so close to Alma, you'd always  get those two confused."

"Or maybe their names in the Book of Mormon are the nicknames."

"What if we're completely mispronouncing the names in the Book of Mormon?  They spoke Hebrew and wrote in reformed Egyptian.  Surely, our American pronunciations are wrong."

"But Joseph Smith met several of them, right?  He had to have learned how to pronounce it."

"Or he pronounced it wrong every time.  And poor Moroni, maybe, he cringes every time we say it.  Every time, every single one of us talks about him, he's up in Heaven, groaning over how much we butcher his name."

"Maybe he's like, 'Dad, why couldn't you have given me a simpler name?  Like yours?"

"And Mormon's like, 'Well, son, we couldn't both be named Mormon.  That would have confused everyone.  I'd have to give you a nickname and shorten it to Momo or something.'"

"Hahahahaha.  We have the best conversations when we're both exhausted.  We should always make a point to talk to each other when we're both sleep deprived."