Use “who” where you would use “she” and “whom” when you would use “her.” Since you woulid say “I wish to thank her,” “whom” is correct.
As both an English major and a linguist, I find it amusing how many people are jumping in to repeat the same explanation, over and over. (“Post first, read the thread later,” is our motto here.) Yes, of course it should be whom, but the only (possible) correction called for in the OP is the one suggested by DPRK, namely, the comma.
A better rephrasing might be, “I wish to thank the many people who helped me.” That reads a little more smoothly to me.
Were Miss Morris to read post 12, she’d probably say something like this:
Let’s back up for a moment, guiznot. Who, whom, that, and which are all relative pronouns. You’re correct that a relative pronoun is necessary when introducing an essential (aka restrictive) clause; however, the essential clause does not determine which relative pronoun is correct. If the essential clause refers to a person or people, who or whom is always correct.
And she’d probably refer you to The Chicago Manual of Style or The Associated Press Stylebook.
You could argue that that is becoming more widely accepted, and some style books say that is perfectly acceptable when referring to people, but Miss Morris would counter that who/whom is always the safer choice, and she’d be correct.
Miss Morris would undoubtedly applaud your choice of major and respect your expertise as a linguist, as I do. I also majored in English, and I’ve taught grammar at both the college and high school levels, but I would never present myself as an expert. I refer and defer to style books and editors.
All I want to say is that everybody and their dog seems to say “between you and I” when the correct phrase is “between you and me.” Drives me crazy.
I agree and if you have further questions you can address them to myself.
I used to hold this view, based only on what my mother taught me, but it is so widely ignored these days, even in many reference works, that it seems another hopeless grammatical battle. I still speak and write this way except for those sad instances where I have found myself saying “that” without thinking, and then regretting it.
Yep, the simple he/him test solves this one. I wish to thank him.
I had help from many people whom I wish to thank.
To rephrase in a case where “who” is appropriate you could say:
I had help from many people who deserve my thanks.
Who vs. whom is not singular vs. plural. Whom when it is the object of a preposition - to whom, from whom, with whom. OTOH it is one of those rules which is disappearing, like not ending a sentence with a preposition - the sort of thing that Winston Churchill said was nonsense up with which he would not put.
As my linguistics professor said, languages never become simpler or more logical, overall - they exchange one form of senseless complexity with another. Unfortunately, to whomever you talk and whoever hears, it will sound wrong, or right.
Regards,
Shodan
PS - Media and data are both plural nouns, vagina does not refer to the whole of the female genitalia, and you are using the wrong fork.
It absolutely is “whom”. It’s the object of a verb.
I wouldn’t, as there’s an annoying general tendency to infest sentences with superfluous commas. Is a pause here really indicated? No? Then lose the comma. I think it would be more distracting than useful.
Whom you wish to thank, no doubt! 
I would argue no, because it subtly changes the meaning. “I had help from many people whom I wish to thank” puts the primary emphasis on the fact that many people provided help and secondarily expresses gratitude for it. Your version puts the primary emphasis on providing thanks. It’s not precisely the same sentiment.
The correct answer is to rephrase it for clarity. “I wish to thank the many people who helped me.” That would be the answer from a professional copy editor and also the SAT/ACT correct answer.
(If your question is when is it correct to use whom vs. who, you’ve gotten good answers. If its ‘how do I fix this sentence’ the answer is rewrite it - I’ve known meth addicts who are less of a hot mess than that sentence.)
Not to nitpick too much on this point, but as I suggested just above in the previous post, your “correct” rephrasing is neither more clear nor does it convey precisely the same meaning. And while I’m not fond of the OP’s phrasing, I reject the notion that a “professional” of any description, whether a copy editor or an SAT adjudicator, can set herself up as the ultimate arbiter of “correct” versus “incorrect” English phrasing that follows the rules of grammar.
That said, I’m well aware that it’s very common to begin acknowledgements with a sentence like “I want to thank …”. I looked at one of Steven Pinker’s books to see how he does it, because I’m a great admirer of his writing style, if not always of his opinions and theories. It was no help at all, because apparently Steven doesn’t feel he needs to acknowledge anyone’s help, at least in the couple of books I looked at. Which leads me to my more general point.
As I said, the “I want to thank …” type of acknowledgement is very common, but there is a different and more humble and inclusive kind of acknowledgement that suggests that the work was a collaborative effort, that it would not have been possible but for the help and contributions of certain people. One can state this outright or strongly imply it, as James Comey does in A Higher Loyalty when he begins his acknowledgements with “Because a group of people cared enough to tell me the truth …”, or one can make that subtle distinction by putting that fact first, as the OP does. Between Pinker’s lack of acknowledgment at all and this acknowledgement of important collaboration, the “I want to thank …” format stands in the middle. In my view, your “correct” reinterpretation subtly changes its position on this spectrum. I, too, would probably rephrase the OP’s version, but I would need to know more about the circumstances and exact meaning intended, and I’d probably rework it entirely with a view to preserving that meaning as closely as possible.
The idea that a comma is merely a typographical way of indicating a pause is another of those frequently taught oversimplifications. Commas help divide up the phrases and clauses in a sentence, something that pauses do in oral speech, but there’s not a one-to-one correspondene between where you pause in speech and where you put a comma in writing.
I agree with guizot:
“I had help from many people whom I wish to thank” = “I had help from {many people whom I wish to thank}” = {people you wish to thank} are your helpers.
“I had help from many people, whom I wish to thank” = you wish to thank the people that helped you.
“I wish to thank the following people: First Person, Second Person,” etc.
“Many” is unnecessary here.
Absolutely not. I once attended a banquet where someone attempted to do that, only to discover that it’s much easier to know where to begin thanking people than where to draw the line to cut off the list.
Reading these threads, I have realized that some of my grammar instincts are incorrect. While I know better than the say “Me and Bob went to the store.” I have tended to change “me” to “I” in “She gave it to Bob and me.”
Bullshit. A brief pause in oral speech is exactly equivalent to the separation of ideas denoted by a comma in writing. This is not “oversimplification”, it’s conceptually accurate. I was actually going to add a further comment in my response to DPRK in post #30 which might be consistent with your comment to guizot above, although I don’t really understand what you’re saying there. Seems to me that “{people you wish to thank} are your helpers” and “you wish to thank the people that helped you” are substantially the same thing. My observation about the comma was going to be along the lines of my response to LHoD in post #30 and further elaborated in my post #32, which might be the same thing you’re trying to say. Namely the following:
“I had help from many people whom I wish to thank” is IMO a stronger acknowledgment of collaborative help than “I wish to thank the many people who helped me.”
“I had help from many people, whom I wish to thank” is stronger still, and the comma is in fact appropriate if, and only if, that stronger emphasis is intended. The perceptual process here says “I had help from many people”; comma pause; let that sink in – many people helped me to achieve this; and now I want to thank them.
An even stronger form would be saying something like: “This work would not have been possible without the help of many people. I want to thank them for their contributions …”
These are all different nuances of meaning, and the last one is clearly very different from “I wish to thank the many people who helped me”, which illustrates the different nuances along this continuum. The weakest form might be thanking the guy who helped carry your luggage up the stairs. The strongest form suggests people who contributed central ideas to the project.
Of course these perceived nuances may vary by context and culture. I can’t claim that they are universal. They’re certainly true in my experience and perception.
I’m sorry, but this is wrong. A comma in a written text is not primarily a visual symbol for a pause (It might be so in a script for speech, for example). It might coincidentally be so, but that’s not what its function is. Its presence or absence does not indicate a “stronger acknowledgement” in the above sentences.
The comma here defines whether the subordinate clause is restrictive or non-restrictive. In this particular example, however, there is no practical difference between the restrictive and non-restrictive meanings.
I disagree, and I particularly object to a characterization like “wrong”. Let’s look at what I said: “A brief pause in oral speech is exactly equivalent to the separation of ideas denoted by a comma in writing.” And here are the guidelines on the use of the comma from the Oxford Dictionaries. It begins with the general principle: "A comma marks a slight break between different parts of a sentence. Used properly, commas make the meaning of sentences clear by grouping and separating words, phrases, and clauses".
It says virtually the same thing. So much for being “wrong”.
Your statement about the role of the comma in restrictive versus non-restrictive clauses is correct, but it’s just one of many specific examples that bears out that same general principle. Further down they give examples. A restrictive clause might be something like “passengers who have young children may board the aircraft first”. An example of a non-restrictive clause would be “Mary, who has two young children, has a part-time job in the library”.
Notice that in oral speech, the non-restrictive example would be spoken with a slight pause before the italicized subordinate clause and right after it. The comma here serves the same purpose in written text. It delineates a separate idea, one which is incidental to the meaning of the sentence. One could almost imagine that thought in parentheses. The sentence is intended to convey the fact that Mary has a part-time job in the library. Incidentally, she has two young children, but that’s merely a passing observation.
Furthermore, consider the implications of restrictive versus non-restrictive interpretations of “I had help from many people whom I wish to thank”. The absence of a comma implies the restrictive interpretation; that is, the sentence expresses the fact that I want to thank those people who helped me. Now it consider it with the comma. It suddenly acquires the form of a non-restrictive clause. The fact that I wish to thank these people becomes relatively incidental; as with any non-restrictive clause, it can be dispensed with while still retaining the principal meaning of the sentence. And that meaning now resides entirely in the first part. The principal fact I’m announcing is that I had help from many people. It’s the difference in emphasis I was describing, and it’s supported by the rules of usage. Again, I think both forms are rather clumsy and I wouldn’t use either of them, but the principle remains.
Oh the whomanity!
“Who” is the subject form and “whom” is the object form.
… “whom I wish to thank” is actually, “I wish to thank whom”, so it is the object form that is needed.
If you had an intransitive (non-action) verb, you would use “who”. For example, “who’s who in America” is correct because it in essence means “who is who”.