I'm Not a Latter-day Saint, I'm a Mormon-American

     After nearly a decade of asking church members and the media to call the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by its full name and to refer to members as "Latter-day Saints" rather than "Mormons", the practice is being emphasized less.

     Last year, 32 million people searched for the term "LDS" online, but church officials believe that the majority of those searches were by church members.  The terms "Mormon", "Mormons", and "Mormonism" accumulated 33.4 million searches in the same time period according to Michael Otterson, managing director of LDS Public affairs in an interview with the Salt Lake Tribune.

     "It's simply a reality that people think of Mormons, they don't think of Latter-day Saints," Otterson said Thursday. "Mormon is here to stay." 

     When the church relaunched its web site geared towards curious non-Mormons, it chose www.mormon.org as the web address.  More recently, the church launched Mormon Radio and released inspirational clips on YouTube entitled Mormon Messages.

     "The church can't really back away from the use of the term Mormon, given the ingrained history of the term and resources the church used to establish it. A better strategy may be to embrace and revitalize it," said marketing research expert Kenneth Foster to the Salt Lake Tribune.