In Scrabble, more than just a name

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

from the February 6, 2007 edition

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Names from nature

There's a long tradition of naming children after qualities. Parents may choose nouns such as grace, hope, joy, mercy, and prudence in the hope that their daughters will possess these qualities.

Many names come from nature. Flower names are often given to baby girls – daisy, iris, poppy, rose, and violet. There are girls are named for other plants and trees: cicely, daphne, erica, fern, ginger, hazel, holly, laurel, olive, rosemary, and willow.

Some boys' names are the same as topographic features: brook, cliff, dale, dell, eddy, forest, garth, and glen.

Several names come from precious stones: amber, beryl, garnet, jade, opal, and ruby. And birds have inspired names, too: brent, mavis, merle, merlin, phoebe, raven, rhea, robin, and wren.

In a turnabout, words in some cases have come from real individuals and literary characters. We call a certain figure-skating jump an axel because a Norwegian skater named Axel Paulsen popularized it. Caesar, or emperor, comes from the Roman emperor Julius Caesar. Shakespeare's Romeo was one of a kind, but now romeo can refer to any love-struck male.

Many names are nouns that refer to types of people: beau (a boyfriend), belle (an attractive woman), billie (a comrade), buddy (a close friend), donna (an Italian lady), guy (a fellow), missy (a young girl), sheila (a young woman), sonny and tad (both mean a small boy), and victor (winner).

Winning strategies

Competitive Scrabble players memorize the list of two-letter words because they're useful for connecting a word to one already on the board. Six of the 97 two-letter words are easy to remember if you think of them as names: al, bo, ed, em, hi, and jo.

Verbs are good to play because, once on the board, most can be expanded with the endings -s, -ed, or -ing. When you think about it, many people have names that are spelled the same as common verbs: bob, chase, don, grant, harry, hector, jimmy, josh, mark, nick, pat, peg, rob, skip, sue, tucker, and wade.

The best way to win at Scrabble is to use all seven letters in a single play. Such a word is called a bingo, and it will earn you 50 bonus points.

Maybe you'll be fortunate enough to draw letters to spell these name words: christy (a skiing turn), derrick (a hoisting apparatus), jasmine (a climbing shrub), tiffany (a thin mesh fabric), or timothy (a European grass).

But even if you don't draw the letters for a bingo, simply knowing which names are valid will help you win – and surprise your friends and family. Think how much fun it will be when you play a word such as jake and your opponent challenges it, saying, "You can't use that. It's a name!"

You'll coolly answer, "Yes, but jake is also a slang word meaning 'all right.' "

 

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