Return to Nephite Hebrew
Mosiah 17 and Mosiah 18 appear to evince wordplay with a pair of roots that only differ in the first character. One is aleph-lamed-mem, and the other is ayin-lamed-mem. The evidence here appears to suggest that in the Nephite dialect of Hebrew, the aleph is often pronounced like a heh. In particular, this seems to be the case with the name "Helam", but additionally, evidence would suggest this is true for "Helaman" as well. I also think, based on this evidence, that "Alma" begins with an ayin. Now, there isn't much evidence before the Book of Mosiah, so it is unclear if this is a language feature that was present in Early Nephite, but the shift from aleph to heh is an attested vocalization shift in Hebrew dialects. We can easily imagine that it was or was not present in Early Nephite unless we can find good examples of how a leading aleph is pronounced in the books preceding Mosiah.
I would generally expect that for words presenting an H in english, if aleph appears to be a good candidate, then we would probably not expect wordplay involving ayin, but we might additionally find wordplay involving heh. Similarly, if a heh is not present, then wordplay might involve both aleph and ayin, but not heh. (Given how weak these letters are at the ends of words, there could be confounding examples involving word terminations.)
H is a tricky letter to come across, because the apparent aspiration that sometimes occurs with aleph means that we could be looking at aleph, heh, or chet.
Now, because of the similarity of ayin and aleph, wordplay CAN cross the boundary between the two roots, but, within Mosiah 17 and 18, it mostly does not. Alma is clearly played against the ayin-based root, and Helam is clearly played against the aleph-based root.
Verse 2 is the introduction of Alma, and it is very common to see fairly immediate wordplay once a new named character is introduced. Here, we see that he is introduced as a "young man", and then soon after, we see the idea of hiding employed. In fact, I would say that this hidden-ness is probably the biggest characteristic of Alma throughout his tale in Mosiah. I'm inclined to think it is the more principle meaning of Alma's name, though it is really hard to say anything solid about that.
"Hidden" is actually considered to be the most fundamental meaning of ayin-lamed-mem. Its usage to describe "youth" is expected to relate to the idea of the hidden potential of youth, unlocked by maturity, or perhaps a rite of passage. This make the name and root, for both Almas, feel particularly apt.
Here we are introduced to Helam, who is an extremely minor character; just one of many that Alma baptizes. On the surface, is is not clear why they bothered to name him, but they did, and this is his introduction, so I looked at his description for a hint of wordplay. Actually, contrary to my highlighting, I first recognized wordplay between his name and Alma's. This is wordplay that crosses the ayin/aleph boundary. The reason I even noticed this was the word stripling. The word stripling is a rather salient word during the ministry of Helaman, and it immediately reminds any student of the Book of Mormon of the "stripling warriors". In particular, these were Helaman's stripling warriors, and the Hebrew word that we would expect to be translated as "stripling" is "elem", and in the plural, we get "alamim". The connection with "Helaman" seems obvious, and that suggests that "Helam" might follow suit. Hence "Helam" and "Alma" are connected. However, if we look around further, for the family of meanings I had identified for these roots, we see that Helam is conspicuously described with the adjective "first". I interpret this to be the primary wordplay, and the connection with Alma's name to be supplemental.
This suggested that whichever character Helam began with, had picked up an "H" sound, and a little research revealed that this is actually well attested for the aleph. Considering that Ammon also appears to have begun with an aleph, the aspiration does not appear to have been a universal characteristic of aleph. Attestation of the aspiration of initial alephs in other dialects show that aspiration sometimes depended upon the vowel sound it was connected to, and sometimes appeared to have been added to make the sound more distinct from the ayin, in order to avoid confusion.
It is worth noting that in Alma 30, more wordplay ensues as Alma, the Younger debates Korihor the anti-christ. The end result is that Korihor is cursed to become dumb, an aleph-lamed-mem play on words.
The most likely wordplay here appears to be between Nehor and hor/har (hill), using a heh. However, roots using an aleph also appear to be significantly relevant to the context of the story.
Now, why was Helam's name so usefully mentioned? Maybe the wordplay was enough, but I don't believe that is the principle reason. In my view, this was a reference to the Ulam of the temple; the porch. This reference is made just as Alma is initiating people into his hidden order of Christians. I'm inclined to also think that Alma's hidden-ness is also connected to "Ta'alumah", a word that can be translated as "mystery", and gets its meaning of hidden-ness from ayin-lamed-mem. A great deal of temple symbolism is found in the stories of Limhi's people and Alma's people.
Helam is also the name of the city founded by Alma's people in the wilderness, and in this context, I'm inclined to see a definite temple context based around the idea of loneliness.