Frequency of Names of Christ in General Conference

This was written in April of 2014 and doesn’t reflect any updated analysis. I’m leaving this here for a potential future update, as well as an improved table

For a Corpus Linguistics class project, I ended up looking at the usage of the names for Christ in General Conference. For my reference list, I used this article from the Ensign. I then found the frequency of the occurrence of these words in General Conference (doing what math I could to make sure that names weren’t double counted).

Of course, with “God,” it’s impossible to completely distinguish when it’s referring to God, the father of Christ, and when it’s referring to Christ without going through every single one of the 130 thousand plus uses.

It’s interesting what titles come up the most frequently. Christ is used more often than “Jesus Christ” and “Jesus Christ” comes up far more often than “Christ Jesus.” “Lord” is used far more often than any of those names. “Savior” is the second most frequent non-name reference, followed by “Almighty.”

The relative usage of “God” has actually gone down in usage, while the usage of other names for Christ has increased. The usage of “Savior” has increased dramatically since the 1850s, suggesting an emphasis on Christ’s role as our savior.

I also looked at the top ten collocations (within two) of the top 25 (or so) words. Collocations are words that are often used in the vicinity of a target word.

God	kingdom	son	bless	commandments	servants	presence	almighty	thank	sight	lamb
Lord	bless	saith	thank	hath	commanded	hosts	requires	wants	supper	expects
Christ	Jesus	amen	Latter-Day	atonement	art	birth	sake	followers	resurrected	risen
Jesus Christ	name	church	gospel	lord	son	savior	atonement	divinity	testament	heirs
Jesus	Christ	name	church	gospel	son	amen	nazareth	atonement	answered	confess
Savior	redeemer	himself	taught	mankind	atonement	resurrected	appeared	crucified	atoning	parable
Lord Jesus Christ	risen	resurrected
Almighty	God	inspiration	giveth	according	worshiping	hinder	pouring	wrath	decree	judgments
Son of God	begotten	literal	art	literally	firstborn	dead	beheld	immortal	resurrected	crucified
Redeemer	our	savior	lives	mankind	amen	liveth	israel	risen	suffered	divine
Lord God	saith	almighty	surely	hath	omnipotent	sanctify	gave	o	liveth	spake
Creator	great	heaven	plan	certain	all-wise	omnipotent	supreme	redeemer	ruler	worlds
Jehovah	great	communed	voice	saying	thou	purposes	arm	speaks	designs	plans
Savior of the world	even	redeemer	literal	role	shepherd
Almighty God	inspiration	power	priesthood	according	worshiping	wrath	blessings	revelations	revelation	judgments
Redeemer of the world	savior	deed	creator
Most High	god	confessing	nevertheless	dwell	divided	wherever	prevail	ruleth
Messiah	promised	name	holy	confer	true	coming	rejected	cometh	handel	mortal
Lord Jesus	Christ	risen
Savior Jesus Christ	Lord
Lord of Hosts	if	hath	thunder	consider	friend	spoken	till	ours
God of Israel	bless	hear	sustain	led
Christ Jesus	in	suffer	concerning	rule	both
Lamb of God	behold	against	saith	seen
Lamb	God	like	slain	book	behold	without	blemish	forever	against	wife

It’s clear that each of the words is used specifically to refer to certain roles of the Christ. For example, “redeemer,” “mankind,” “atonement,” “resurrected,” “crucified,” and “atoning” are all words associated with the Savior and his role of ‘saving mankind’. Whereas “Almighty” is a title used with words like “pouring,” “wrath,” “decree,” and “judgments” which reflect an Old Testament view of Christ and the use of his power.

Religion and language are really interesting subjects, and when you put the two together, you end up with fascinating results.