So did Joseph Smith just pull out a handy map from his vast frontier library, stick his finger into the middle of the Indian Ocean, and pluck out a couple of place names to insert into his fabled text? Or is the similarity in names just coincidence?
"The Comoros Islands and Moroni" at FAIRMormon.org examines these charges and finds them implausible. An examination of gazetteers from Joseph's era suggests that even if Joseph were looking for names from maps, he would not have found both. There is no evidence that Joseph had access to maps with the name Comora on it. But if he had access to major maps, he theoretically could have stumbled upon one source to find the name Comora, but Moroni does not show up there. This is not surprising since the tiny settlement of Moroni did not become a capital city until 1876, long after the Book of Mormon had been published. A century later, in 1958, its population was still on 6500. Not a big draw for 19th century maps, and not likely to fall into the hands of eager 19th-century plagiarists who had to open random books from their vast collections to come up with names, words, and phrases--a tedious process for a busy plagiarizer cranking out the large Book of Mormon text in about 65 days.
Coincidences happen. It's an interesting one, but too obscure and implausible to add anything to the debate over the origins of the Book of Mormon. Keep trying!
Related resource: LDSFAQ on Plagiarism in the Book of Mormon
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