As another way of putting names with faces, today in class I took pictures of the Scrabble groups in the 9:15 class, which I have included in this blog post. On Monday during your Scrabble debriefing, I will take pictures of the groups in the 10:40 class. In between the pictures of the groups that follow, you will find portions of an alphabetical list of first names that are also common nouns and therefore playable as Scrabble words.
- Al: a type of East Indian tree
- Alan: a breed of hunting dog (also aland, alant)
- Alec: a herring
- Ana: a collection of miscellany about a specific topic
- Anna: a former Indian coin
- Barbie: a barbecue
- Belle: a pretty woman
- Ben: an inner room
- Benny: an amphetamine pill
- Bertha: a style of wide collar
- Beth: a Hebrew letter
- Biff: to hit
- Bill: to charge for goods
- Billy: a short club
- Bo: a friend
- Bobby: a policeman
- Bonnie: pretty (also bonny)
- Brad: a small nail or tack
- Carl: a peasant or manual laborer (also carle)
- Carol: to sing merrily
- Celeste: a percussive keyboard instrument (also celesta)
- Chad: a scrap of paper
- Chevy: to chase (also chivy)
- Christie: a type of turn in skiing (also christy)
- Clarence: an enclosed carriage
- Dagwood: a large, stuffed sandwich (named after the comic strip character who was fond of them)
- Daphne: a flowering shrub with poisonous berries
- Davy: a safety lamp
- Deb: a debutante
- Devon: a breed of cattle
- Dexter: located to the right
- Dom: a title given to some monks
- Don: to put on a piece of clothing
- Donna: an Italian woman of repute
- Erica: a shrub of the heath family
- Fay: to join together closely
- Florence: a former European gold coin
- Franklin: a nonnoble medieval English landowner
- Fritz: a nonworking or semi-functioning state
- Gilbert: a unit of magneto-motive force
- Gilly: to transport on a type of train car
- Graham: whole-wheat flour
- Hank: to secure a sail
- Hansel: to gift a gift, usually to commence a new year (also handsel)
- Harry: to harass
- Henry: a unit of electrical inductance
- Herby: full of herbs
- Hunter: a person or animal that hunts
- Jack: to hoist with a type of lever
- Jacky: a sailor
- Jake: okay, satisfactory
- Jane: a girl or woman
- Jay: any of various birds, known for their crests and shrill calls
- Jean: denim
- Jenny: a female donkey
- Jerry: a German soldier
- Jess: to fasten a strap around the leg of a bird in falconry (also jesse)
- Jill: a unit of measure equal to to 1/4 of a pint
- Jimmy: to pry open
- Joannes: a Portugese coin (also johannes)
- Joe: a fellow
- Joey: a young kangaroo
- John: a toilet
- Johnny: a hospital gown
- Jones: a strong desire
- Josh: to tease
- Kelly: a bright shade of green
- Kelvin: a unit of absolute temperature
- Ken: to know
- Kent: past tense of ken
- Kerry: a breed of cattle
- Kris: a curved dagger
- Lars: plural of lar: a type of ancient Roman guardian deity (also lares)
- Lassie: a lass
- Laura: an aggregation of hermitages used by monks
- Laurel: to crown one’s head with a wreath
- Lee: to shelter from the wind
- Louie: a lieutenant
- Louis: a former gold coin of France worth twenty francs
- Mac: a raincoat
- Mae: more
- Mamie: a tropical fruit-bearing tree (also mamey and mammee)
- Marc: the pulpy residue of fruit after it is pressed for wine
- Marcel: to make waves in the hair using a special iron
- Marge: a margin
- Mark: a line, figure, or symbol
- Martin: any type of the bird also known as a swallow
- Marvy: marvelous
- Matilda (a hobo’s bundle (chiefly Australian)
- Matt: to put a dull finish on (also matte)
- Maxwell: a unit of magnetic flux
- Mel: honey
- Merle: a blackbird
- Mickey: a drugged drink
- Mike: a microphone (also mic)
- Milt: to fertilize with fish sperm
- Minny: a minnow
- Mo: a moment
- Molly: a type of tropical fish
- Morgan: a unit of frequency in genetics
- Morris: a type of folk dance from England
- Morse: describing a type of code made of long and short signals
- Mort: a note sounded in hunting to announce the death of prey
- Nelson: a type of wrestling hold
- Newton: the unit of force required to accelerate one kilogram of mass on meter per second
- Nick: to make a shallow cut
- Norm: a standard
- Pam: the name of the jack of clubs in some card games
- Parker: one who parks a motorized vehicle
- Peter: to lessen gradually
- Pia: a fine membrane of the brain and spinal cord
- Randy: sexually excited
- Regina: a queen
- Rex: a king
- Rick: to stack, hay, corn, or straw
- Roger: the pirate flag
- Sal: salt
- Sally: to make a brief trip or a sudden start
- Sawyer: one who saws wood
- Shawn: past tense of show
- Sheila: a girl or young woman
- Sol: the fifth note on a diatonic scale (also so)
- Sonny: a boy or young man
- Sophy: a former Persian ruler
- Spencer: a type of sail
- Tad: a young boy
- Tammie: a fabric used in linings (also tammy)
- Ted: to spread for drying
- Teddy: a woman’s one-piece undergarment
- Terry: a soft, absorbent type of cloth
- Tiffany: a thin, mesh fabric
- Timothy: a Eurasian grass used for grazing
- Toby: a drinking mug in the shape of a man or a man’s face
- Tod: a British unit of weight for wool equal to twenty-eight pounds
- Tom: the male of various animals
- Tommy: a loaf or chunk of bread
- Tony: very stylish
- Vera: very
- Victoria: a light, four-wheeled carriage
- Warren: an area where rabbits live, or a crowded maze-like place
- Webster: one who weaves
- Will: to choose, decree, or induce to happen
- Willy: to clean fibers with a certain machine
Bonus Point Opportunity!
The first student to correctly respond to the playable first names question below will earn a bonus point for his/her/their first major writing assignment.
How many students in English 1103. 23 and 24 have first names–meaning the first names that they go by–that are playable Scrabble words? Note that Jane and Shawn are playable but Janie and Sean are not.
Directions for Finding and Submitting Your Answer
- Review the list of playable first names, compare it with the students’ names on the class page, and determine which of the students’ names are playable in Scrabble.
- Compose a response of one or more complete sentences that includes (1) the number of students with playable names, and (2) the first and last name of each student, followed by the section number in parentheses.
- Post your comment as a reply to this blog post.
- To post your comment, click the title of the post, “What’s in a Name. . . . ,” then scroll down to the bottom of the post. There you will see the image of an airmail envelope with a white rectangular box for your comment. Type your comment in the box and hit return. Voila! You have submitted your answer. Good luck!
Jane Lucas 
In ENG 1103, Sections 23 and 24, there are a total of ten students that have first names that are playable in the game of Scrabble. In Section 23, Kelly Samz (23), Parker Pignataro (23), Harry Hennessy (23), Hunter Tobias (23), Jack Rynning (23), and Mark Epstein (23) have playable first names. In Section 24, Nick Kernaghan (24), Victoria Leary (24), Nick Lourneco (24), and Josh Stevens (24) have playable names as well. In total, there are six students in Section 23 and four students in Section 24.
Congratulations, Emma, excellent work! You are the first student to identify the ten students in English 1103, sections 23 and 24, whose first names are playable words in Scrabble, which awards you a bonus point for your first major written assignment for class. I hope you enjoyed finding the answers as much as I enjoyed creating this exercise. Have a great weekend!