Name Games
By Michael Naylor

How many students in your class have perfectly symmetrical names?

As the class is learning new names and new faces at the beginning of the school year, it's the perfect time to have fun with names and learn some math concepts at the same time.

More-Less-Same Names
(Grades K-1)
On a sheet of large grid paper, have your students write their first names, one letter per square (or, you can write their names for them). Make one copy for each of your students and have them cut out the names. Ask, "How many letters are in your name?" and have your students count. They should then compare the length of their name to other names. "Which students have the same number of letters as your name? More? Less?"

Have your students group the names according to more, less and same number of letters. This is a great activity to help students make a connection between number and length – it's exciting for kids to work with their classmates' names!

Name numbers
(Grades 2-3)
A popular cipher is to assign each letter a value according to its position in the alphabet. The most common cipher is A=1, B=2, C=3, etc. Ask your students to write their names as codes. Write a few of these on the board and see if students can then decipher their classmates' names.

Now ask your students to total the numbers that make up their name. For example, Pam is 16+1+13=30. Do any of your students have the same number as a classmate? Which name has the greatest value? The least? Students can compare last and middle names as well.

Name Number Operations
(Grades 4-8)
Challenge your students to use their "name numbers" to create their age by using each number once in a series of arithmetic operations. For example, Wilma is 10 years old and her name numbers are 23, 9, 12, 13, 1. She might find 12+13-23-1+9=10, while nine-year- old Carl (3, 1, 18, 12) might find (18-12+3) x 1=9.

Your students might also like to try this activity with their last name or first and last name, and can try to make other important numbers, for example, like the day of the month on which they were born.

Next, encourage your students to share their equations with their classmates. Is there more than one way to calculate? Students can then discuss and explore – be sure to mention careful use of parentheses and order of operations.

Letter Tally
(Grades 4-6)
What are the most common letters in the first names of your students? Ask your class to brainstorm what the most common letters could be. The kids can then work in pairs and design and write an efficient method to collect data. As a class, discuss methods and decide which method would be easiest, and then use that method. One easy way might be to write the alphabet on the board and have each student put a tally mark under each letter that matches each letter in their name. Another method could be to call out each letter in turn and have students raise a hand if they have that letter in their name, raise two hands if it's repeated, two hands and a leg if it appears three times, etc.
Next, have your students make a graph. How does the data correlate with the letter frequency in the English language? Letter frequencies can be found easily with a web search, or your students could investigate further as a class. Have them choose a textbook page, assign each student a letter and ask them to count the number of times their letter appears on that page.

Name Symmetries
(Grades 4-8)
Have your students identify and draw lines of symmetry in each letter of their name. M, for example, has one vertical line of symmetry, H has both a vertical and a horizontal line of symmetry. Who has the "most symmetrical" name? The "least symmetrical?"

Now ask your students to rewrite their names as "art" on blank paper. They should try to carefully draw the characters so they are as symmetric as possible. After your students have finished creating their names as art, they can then mark the lines of symmetry they find.

Some names are completely symmetric: "Debbie" can be flipped top to bottom and still read the same because each letter has a horizontal line of symmetry. "Tom," "Timothy" and "Hiawatha" can be written vertically and then flipped left to right because all of the letters have vertical lines of symmetry.

Michael Naylor is a professor of math education at Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA.

August/September 2005, Vol.36, No.1