To help us put names with faces, I have included in this post pictures of all of you in sections 08 and 18 with picture captions that list your names. I encourage you to review this page frequently. In between the pictures, I have included lists of first names that are also common nouns, making them playable in Scrabble.
- Al: a type of East Indian tree
- Alan: a breed of hunting dog (also aland, alant)
- Alec: a herring
- Ally: an advocate
- Ana: a collection of miscellany about a specific topic
- Ananda: extreme happiness
- Anna: a former Indian coin
- Ava: at all, of all
- Bailey: an outer castle wall
- 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
- Brock: a badger
- Calla: a tropical plant
- Cam: a rotating or sliding piece of machinery
- Carl: a peasant or manual laborer (also carle)
- Carol: to sing merrily
- Celeste: a percussive keyboard instrument (also celesta)
- Chad: a scrap of paper
- Charlie: a fool
- Chase: to pursue
- Chevy: to chase (also chivy)
- Christie: a type of turn in skiing (also christy)
- Clarence: an enclosed carriage
- Dalton: a unit of atomic mass
- Dagwood: a large, stuffed sandwich
- 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
- Gi: a white garment worn in martial arts
- 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
- Haven: a shelter
- Henry: a unit of electric inductance
- Herby: full of herbs
- 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
- Jordan: a type of container
- Joseph: a woman’s long cloak
- 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
- 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
- Melody: an agreeable succession of musical sounds
- 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
- Willow: a tree or shrub
- Willy: to clean fibers with a certain machine
Bonus Assignment Opportunity!
Students who correctly respond to the playable first names and last names question below will earn a bonus assignment credit, which means they will have an extra assignment in the short assignments (course work) category. Completing a bonus assignment such as this one will offset a low class exercise or pop quiz grade.
How many students in English 1103.08 and 18 have first and/or last names that are playable Scrabble words? Keep in mind that only playable first names appear in the lists above. Some students in each section may have playable last names as well.
Directions for Finding and Submitting Your Answer
- Review the list of playable first names, compare it with the students’ first and last names in the photo captions above, or on the class page, and determine which of the students’ first and last names are playable in Scrabble. If you aren’t sure whether a name is also a common noun, you can consult the Scrabble website’s dictionary and Merriam Webster’s Scrabble Dictionary site.
- Compose a response of one or more complete sentences that includes the first and last name of each student with a playable name. Indicate which name, first or last, is playable.
- Post your comment as a reply to this blog post by 9:00 a.m. on Monday, August 25.
- 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! I will make the comments visible before class on Monday, August 25.
Next Up
For class on Monday, you will read David Sedaris‘ essay “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” which is posted in the readings folder on Blackboard. You do not need to print a copy. I will distribute copies in class. We will examine Sedaris’ essay as a model for your own literacy narrative, which you will begin drafting in class on Wednesday.
Jane Lucas 
There are multiple students in English 1103.08 and 1103.18 that have names playable as Scrabble words. They include: Ally Deters (Ally – first name), Calla Dickey (Calla – first name), Gi Amitrano (Gi – first name), Campbell Nelson (Nelson – last name), Haven Tucker (Haven – first name), Bailey Upchurch (Bailey – first name), Sawyer Richardson (Sawyer – first name), Warren Webster (Warren and Webster), Grayson Crouch (Crouch – last name), Kamauri Brown + Adrienne Brown (Brown -last name), and Garrett Hickey (Hickey – last name).
Cameron, thank you for taking advantage of the opportunity to learn additional playable Scrabble words and earn a bonus-assignment credit. “Sawyer” (one who saws), “Warren” (a rabbit home), and “Webster” (one who weaves) are all playable names, but those names aren’t among the ones in sections 8 and 18. Perhaps you also looked at one of the class lists from a previous semester. In any case, I applaud your effort and look forward to seeing you in class on Wednesday. The complete lists of playable names in sections 8 and 18 will be included in tomorrow’s blog post.
Ally Deters, first and last
Calla Dickey, first and last
Haven Tucker, first and last
Bailey Upchurch, first
Gi Amitrano, first
Campbell Nelson, last
Adrienne Brown, last
Kamauri Brown, last
Amanda Franco, last
Chloe Freeman, last
Grayson Crouch, last
Garrett Hickey, last
Heloise Richer, last
Bailey, thank you for taking advantage of the opportunity to learn additional playable Scrabble words and earn a bonus-assignment credit. I applaud your effort and look forward to seeing you in class on Wednesday. The complete lists of playable names in sections 8 and 18 will be included in tomorrow’s blog post.
Based on Scrabble rules, several students have playable names. Myra Chatwal’s first name, for instance, is playable because it’s a type of myrrh, a fragrant resin. Grayson Crouch’s last name works as it’s a verb meaning to stoop or bend down. The last name of Garrett Hickey is also playable, referring to a small mark on the skin. Raven Houston’s first name is valid as it is the name of a large black bird. The last name Nelson is playable for Campbell Nelson because it is a common proper noun. Preston Erwin and Heloise Richer’s first names are also considered playable as they are common proper nouns. Luke Simpson’s first name is playable as it is a common proper noun, as is Haven Tucker’s, which is also a noun for a place of safety.
Annaliese, thank you for taking advantage of the opportunity to learn additional playable Scrabble words and earn a bonus-assignment credit. I applaud your effort and look forward to seeing you in class on Wednesday. The complete lists of playable names in sections 8 and 18 will be included in tomorrow’s blog post.
Ally Deters has a playable first name because an ally is an advocate.
Bailey Upchurch has a playable first name because a bailey is an outer castle wall.
Calla Dickey has a playable first name because a calla is a tropical plant.
Campbell Nelson has a playable last name because a nelson is a type of wrestling hold.
Gi Amitrano has a playable first name because a gi is a white garment worn in martial arts.
Haven Tucker has a playable first name because a haven is a shelter.
Haven, thank you for taking advantage of the opportunity to learn additional playable Scrabble words and earn a bonus-assignment credit. Your last name is playable as well. It means to tire. I applaud your effort and look forward to seeing you in class on Wednesday. The complete lists of playable names in sections 8 and 18 will be included in tomorrow’s blog post.
After looking back at the list of words you provided us with, I had compared it to the names of people in the captions under the photos and found some matches. I found 4 students that have names that are playable. Bailey Upchurch has a playable first name, Campbell Nelson has a playable last name, Haven Tucker has a playable first name, and even Calla Dickey has a playable first name. Each of these names from the people I picked out in the captions of the photo have playable name that you can actually find in an English dictionary, so the next time you play scrabble you will definitely know that these are some playable words to use to your benefit.
Chloe, thank you for submitting your response. Since you posted after Monday’s 9 a.m. deadline, you will not receive a bonus assignment credit, but I appreciate your effort. The complete lists of playable names in sections 8 and 18 will be included in this morning’s blog.