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
- Dick: a detective
- 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
- 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 category. Completing a bonus assignment such as this one will offset a low class exercise or pop quiz grade.
Which students in English 1103.08 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 may have playable last names as well–and in fact, there are more playable last names in your class than there are first names
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, January 12.
- 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, January 12.
Next Up
For class on Monday, you will read David Sedaris‘s 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 
The people with playable names for scrabble would be the following: Zach Dick, Sierra Welch, Davis Smith, Nick Beeker, and Jermaine Cain.
The words that can be playable out of these names are: Dick (Last Name), Welch (Last Name), Davis (First Name), Nick (First Name), and Cain (Last Name). That is the list!
Sincerely, Jermaine Cain
Zack Dick- Zack dick has a playable last name, his last name
Dick means detective.
‘Nick Beeker- Nick Beeker has a playable first name, Nick means to make a shallow cut.
Tommy McHugh- Tommy McHugh has a playable first name,
Tommy means loaf or chunk of bread.
Sierra Welch- Sierra has a playable first and last name, Sierra refers to a mountain range or saw like edge & Welch means to fail to keep a promise.
‘Aidan Berlin- Aidan has a – playable last name, Berlin refers to a type of horse drawn carriage and is also used as a noun in word games.
Jermaine Cain- Jermaine Cain has a playable last name. Cain means metal or wooden walking cane.
Davis Smith- David Smith has a playable last name, Smith refers to a person who works with metal.
‘Dylan Virga – Dylan Virga has a playable last name, Virga is a meteorological term meaning precipitation that evaporates before reaching the ground.
Nick Beeker’s first name is to make a shallow cut.
Aidan Berlin’s last name is a type of carriage.
Jermain Cain’s last name is the brother of Abel.
Zach Dick’s last name is a detective.
Davis Smith’s last name is a metalworker.
Dylan Virga’s last name is a small amount of precipitation that evaporates before it reaches the ground.
Sierra Welch’s first name is a mountain range, and her last name is a verb meaning to break a promise or agreement.
The following first names that are playable in scrabble include Nick, Sierra, and Tommy. Additionally, our classes last names that are playable include Cain, Berlin, Smith, Welch, Dick, and Virga.
First and Last names that are playable in scrabble:
Sierra Welch
First name meaning: The meaning of Sierra refers to a mountain range or saw like edge
Last name meaning: The meaning of Welch means to fail to keep a promise.
Nick Beeker
First name meaning: The meaning of Nick is to make a shallow cut
Jermaine Cain
Last name meaning: The meaning of Cain is metal or wooden walking cane.
Dylan Virga
Last name meaning: The meaning of Virga is a meteorological term meaning rain that evaporates before reaching the ground.
Davis Smith
Last name meaning: The meaning of Smith refers to a person who works with metal.
Aidan Berlin
Last name meaning: The meaning of Berlin refers to a type of horse drawn carriage and is also a noun.
Zack Dick
Last name meaning: The meaning of Dick means detective.
Tommy McHugh
First name meaning: The meaning of Tommy means loaf or chunk of bread.
In the game Scrabble, you can play names if they are common nouns. This is evident in our classmates, as some have names that are playable. For instance, Zack Dick, his last name Dick, is a playable work, as dick means a detective. We can also see this with Tommy McHugh, as the word Tommy means a load or chunk of bread. My name, Sierra Welch, is also a playable word, as Sierra refers to the mountain range and Welch means to welsh. Jermaine Cain’s last name, Cain, is playable, Aiden Berlin’s last name is playable, and lastly, Dylan Virga’s last name, Virga, is also playable.