In Scrabble, more than just a name

Not all proper names are off limits – if you know their lowercase counterpart.

By Kathryn Wilkens

from the February 6, 2007 edition

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What do these people have in common? Bill Gates, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Tony Blair, Faith Hill, Laura Bush, Lance Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, and Sally Ride?

Give up? The first names of all these famous people have a lowercase counterpart. Some of them are common nouns: bill, faith, and lance.

Why is this important? For one thing, knowing it will give you an advantage the next time you play Scrabble.

Sure, the official rules say that no capitalized words are allowed, so you might think that eliminates names.

But many given names, including those of the people mentioned, are valid for play. Ruth means compassion, tony means stylish, laura is a type of monastery, a nelson is a wrestling hold, and sally means to rush out suddenly.

These definitions come from "The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary," which lists more than 500 first names that are also lowercase nouns, verbs, and adjectives. (Words that are pronounced the same but have different meanings are called homonyms.)

Who would have guessed that a celeste is a keyboard instrument or that a stella is a former US coin? Did you know that a pedro is a card game, a jordan is a container, and a chad is a scrap of paper? Also, a joseph is a woman's cloak, and a judas is a peephole.

What a coincidence!

Coincidence accounts for a number of names that are homonyms of common words. The name Eve has nothing to do with eve, the night before Christmas, or New Year's. The name Herb has nothing to do with herbs that you put in a salad. But if you ever draw the letters for barb, drew, gene, homer, marge, and will, you can play them because they have other meanings besides being names.

Names can coincide with fabrics (georgette, jean, serge, tammy, terry); letters of the alphabet (bee, dee, jay, kay); units of measurement (henry, jill, kelvin, morgan, newton); and old-fashioned dances (lindy, morris).

Some people's nicknames are descriptive adjectives, such as curly, misty, rocky, rusty, sunny, and tawny. Other names are homonyms of adjectives: curt, dusty, frank, rich, sandy, shelly, and woody.

Several American names are spelled the same as terms from other countries. A few examples include alma (Egyptian dancing girl), cory (former monetary unit of Guinea), louis (former gold coin of France), and sophy (ruler of Persia).

Scottish spellings give us ava (at all), bree (broth), ken and kent (forms of verb "to know"), kirk (church), mae (more), saul (soul), and vera (very).

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