Wordsmith.org quotes a supposed sage as saying, “All the life’s wisdom can be found in anagrams. Anagrams never lie.”
Is this so? Can we really learn hidden truth by rearranging the letters of a name or phrase? I had to find out!
For me, a natural place to start was with my dear departed mom. Her full legal name: “Minnie Charmian Younglof Matthews”. With a bit of doodling, I discovered these letters reshuffle to spell: “I am a chief, motherly, stunning woman.” Also: “Humanely fine woman, cast-iron might.” Plus: “An influencing, rosy, white-hot mamma.” Perfect!
For my wife, “Cheri Victoria Wallace Matthews”, I got “Ha ha! Well! Star comic, creative wit” (which certainly fits) and “worthwhile acclaim reactivates” (it certainly does). Her name also spells “Well! Charisma to a creative witch”. (Since Cheri thinks of witchery as symbolic of feminine power or womanly magic, that’s a good thing.) Finally, there’s “Whatever catholic miracle waits”. (Cheri being a Baha’i, I assume this is lower-case “catholic”, in its proper sense of “universal”.)
Then there’s the name of my sister, “Janelle Wallace Ramsey”, which transposes into: “A really calm, sane jewel”. Spot on — just as I’d found with my mom and my wife.
By this point in my testing, I believed anagrams do indeed hold vital clues to one’s true nature and identity. So I turned hopeful eyes toward my own name, only to find…
…that the exact letters in “Gary Leland Matthews” rearrange to spell:
✦ “Lewd, mean, ghastly rat”;
✦ “A thwarted, smelly nag”;
✦ “That man rages lewdly”;
✦ “Lame, trashy, twangled”;
✦ “Well! The mad gay rants”;
✦ “Mangy swellhead tart”!
Ouch. This wasn’t going as well as I’d hoped. Could I perhaps save the day by counting my own initials — GLM — as a “word” in the anagram?
See for yourself. Here’s the new set I turned up:
✦ “GLM: rattlesnake yawns”;
✦ “GLM: hearty wasteland”;
✦ “GLM: lewd, earthy Satan”;
✦ “GLM: hasty, leaden wart”;
✦ “A new, deathly star: GLM”;
✦ “GLM: a tasty whale nerd”.
Hence, a request: Hᴇʟᴘ ᴍᴇ! Can someone — anyone — please rearrange the letters of “Gary Leland Matthews” into an anagram that says something flattering about me? Or at least something vaguely neutral, so as not to further flatten my already bruised ego?
And one more thing: Yes, “twangled” is a real word. But that’s another story. ≧◔◡◔≦
4 responses to “The Gary Matthews Anagrams”
Awesome, Gary 🙂
I’ll try to do some anagrams with my own name 🙂
Wonderful! Just glancing at the letters of your name, I would guess you could construct literally thousands of clever anagrams. There’s just the right mix of common vowels and consonants.
Just as a first pass, I notice “pious alpha medicine”. But I’ll bet you can do a lot better!
I’ve got one. How about “Legendary Malt Thaws”
Wonderful, Patricia! Thanks so much — you always have my back.
I’d want to edit this to “thaws legendary malt” — meaning perhaps I’d previously frozen an extraordinarily good, memorable malt because I couldn’t drink it right then; now I’m getting back to it.
Not an effusively flattering anagram, necessarily — but when the alternative is stuff like “lewd, mean, ghastly rat”, I’ll take it! Thanks again, and have a great day.