Master of All Masters

In the High Frequency Word Project curriculum this week, we came upon the word < my >. Rebecca Loveless and Fiona Hamilton explain that < mi > was the original Old English spelling and that it's a clip of the word < mine >. We still see this construction sometimes today, such as "mine eyes have seen the glory" in the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Later it became a convention in English that no complete English word can end with an i, so the < i > toggled to a < y >, which is how it is still spelled today. (This convention also explains why there is an < e > on the end of words such as die, pie, etc.)

One of my students, who has given herself a name that ends with an < i >, raised her hand to ask if the SWI spelling rules apply to names.

THEY DO NOT.

We consider proper nouns to be un-analyzable. Common nouns are created through consensus, and have languages of origin and fascinating stories of what happened to them along the way. A name can be whatever anyone wants it to be! I can name my pet frog "Google-woogle-snap-ipzsh" and no one can stop me.

To drive home the point that common nouns can't just be made up on the spot and you would then expect everyone around you to use them, I like the old folktale, Master of All Masters. This is in the common domain and can be found online for free, such as here (sacred-texts.com). You can also buy picture book versions. I like the one illustrated by Marcia Sewall.

Of course, if you want to be subversive, you could talk about Andrew Clement's book Frindle, where a child tries to do just that... and ultimately succeeds when his invented word for "pen" is added to the dictionary.

Frindle
by Andrew Clements

Or you can mention robot, which came into English as the translation of the Czech robotnik, a word which was invented by someone who was writing a short story!

The Czech Play That Gave Us the Word ‘Robot’
The MIT Press Reader

This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!