Adam-ondi-Ahman

A place named in a single verse, by a naming the verse attributes to the Lord, for an event it says is still to happen — and grounded, in the same sentence, on a prophet cited by name.

What this page maps. Modern revelation, reported as the text gives it. Where the place stands on a real-world map, and what is there, are external questions outside this wiki’s scope. Dates, places of reception, and occasions are not in this wiki’s source text and are not stated.

Account

One verse, doing four things

The whole of section 116 is a single verse, and it performs four distinct acts in one sentence: it renames a place, it attributes the renaming, it states a future event, and it cites a prophet by name.

“Spring Hill is named by the Lord Adam-ondi-Ahman, because, said he, it is the place where Adam shall come to visit his people, or the Ancient of Days shall sit, as spoken of by Daniel the prophet.” (D&C 116:1)

Two grammatical facts about that verse are worth stating, because they are unusual for this corpus. It is written about the Lord rather than as him — “is named by the Lord”, “said he” — where nearly every section in this cluster speaks in the first person; and the naming is reported as already accomplished rather than commanded. The wiki attributes the sentence to the record itself and not to a revealed first-person voice, exactly as the verse frames it.

The name is not confined to this verse. “Adam-ondi-Ahman” stands at five distinct frozen verses in the corpus — D&C 78:15, D&C 107:53, D&C 116:1, D&C 117:8, and D&C 117:11 — and nowhere else in the corpus. Two of those five are in this cluster and are treated below; the other two belong to other clusters and are cited, not restated.

The citation

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 116:1: “Spring Hill is named by the Lord Adam-ondi-Ahman, because, said he, it is the place where Adam shall come to visit his people, or the Ancient of Days shall sit, as spoken of by Daniel the prophet.” - Daniel 7:9: “I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire.”

The revelation names its source — “as spoken of by Daniel the prophet” (D&C 116:1) — which is why this record was minted asserted_by: "source" at the 2026-08-10 editorial review. Divergences reported: tense — the vision reports what the seer saw (“did sit”, Daniel 7:9), the revelation states what will happen (“shall sit”, D&C 116:1); capitalization — “Days” against “days”; and the revelation supplies two things the vision’s verse does not, a location and an identification of the figure with Adam. The vision’s own descriptive matter — the garment, the hair, the throne, the wheels — has no counterpart in the revelation. The title “Ancient of Days” stands at six distinct frozen verses in the corpus: Daniel 7:9, Daniel 7:13, Daniel 7:22, D&C 27:11, D&C 116:1, and D&C 138:38. Daniel 7:9 is paired because it is the only one of the three vision verses in which the figure sits, which is the act the revelation names. D&C 27:11 and D&C 138:38 are each already registered against Daniel 7:9 on The Committing of Keys and The Redemption of the Dead; those are different verse pairs and are disclosed here.

The second naming, and a word that stands twice

A later section in this cluster names the same place twice more and sets beside it a second name the corpus uses nowhere else in that form: “Is there not room enough on the mountains of Adam-ondi-Ahman, and on the plains of Olaha Shinehah, or the land where Adam dwelt, that you should covet that which is but the drop, and neglect the more weighty matters?” (D&C 117:8).

Three textual facts about that verse. The compound “Olaha Shinehah” is glossed inside the verse itself as “the land where Adam dwelt” (D&C 117:8), so the identification is the text’s own and not the wiki’s. “Olaha” stands at exactly one distinct frozen verse in the corpus — this one. And the second element stands at exactly two: this verse and Abraham 3:13, where a different text supplies a different gloss for it — “This is Shinehah, which is the sun.” (Abraham 3:13).

That the same word is glossed as the sun in one frozen work and appears inside a place-name glossed as the land where Adam dwelt in another is a textual fact, and it is reported here as one. No connection is registered from it: the shared material is a single word, far below what this wiki treats as evidence of a textual relationship, and what the coincidence means — whether the two uses are the same word at all — is not something the texts settle. It is listed under Open uncertainties rather than asserted.

The place is named a third time in the same section, in an instruction to a man named in the verse: “come up to the land of Adam-ondi-Ahman, and be a bishop unto my people, saith the Lord, not in name but in deed” (D&C 117:11). That instruction belongs to the treatment of named servants and is flagged to Servants Named in the Calls.

Significance

The verse is one of the shortest sections in the book and one of the densest. It supplies a name, an etymology-by-decree rather than by derivation, a future event, and a citation, in a single sentence — and it grounds all of it on a prophet named by name rather than on the speaker’s own authority, which is rare in this corpus and is the feature most worth noticing.

What is not in the verse is equally reportable. It gives no date, no participants beyond Adam, and no account of what the visit or the sitting consists of. The vision it cites supplies furniture — thrones, a garment, fire — but the revelation borrows none of it. A reader who wants more than a name, a place, and a promise will not find it here, and this page does not supply it from elsewhere.

Key references

D&C 116:1 — the naming, the event, and the citation of Daniel
D&C 117:8 — the mountains, the plains of Olaha Shinehah, and the in-verse gloss
D&C 117:11 — the land named again, in an instruction to a named man
D&C 78:15, D&C 107:53 — the name’s two other standings in the corpus

Places & Geography · Zion · The Gathering to Zion · The Committing of Keys · Servants Named in the Calls · Index · Connections

Sources

Doctrine and Covenants sections 116 and 117:8, 117:11 (verse text only; headnotes excluded). Daniel 7 quoted alongside them; Abraham 3 quoted, and D&C 27, D&C 78, D&C 107, and D&C 138 cited, inside disclosures.

Every quote is verbatim from the frozen source text, cited to its exact reference and checked character-for-character; no quote crosses a verse boundary. One connection record is registered on this page, [textual], minted asserted_by: "source" at the 2026-08-10 editorial review. Phrase distributions are counts of distinct frozen verses in the corpus, derived by script at the time of writing on the stated basis.