Good Names, Good People
A running, dated feed of short, positive profiles of real people — historic and present-day — who share popular names. New posts appear here on a regular schedule; every name's own detail page always shows the full set of profiles researched for it.
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July 3, 2026
Marcelo Bielsa — Marcelo
Okay so Marcelo Bielsa is basically the football equivalent of that one professor whose class destroys you but somehow makes you better at the subject forever — his whole reputation is built on an intense, obsessive,…
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July 3, 2026
Marcelo Vieira — Marcelo
Watching a great attacking full-back like Marcelo is a little like watching a good animator work — it's all rhythm and timing, a run that looks improvised but is actually built on years of repeated, disciplined…
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July 2, 2026
Felipe II of Spain — Felipe
I'll admit kings and Golden Ages are a bit far afield from my usual beat of third graders and county fair columns, but Felipe II's story caught my eye because of El Escorial — a man who spent that kind of effort and…
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July 2, 2026
Felipe Massa — Felipe
Felipe Massa spent over a decade competing at Formula One's highest level, which if you actually think about it is a long time to hold onto any job where you're only as good as your last performance and somebody younger…
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July 2, 2026
Felipe VI of Spain — Felipe
Royalty's not really my department — closest thing we had to a king in Braddock was whoever ran the union hall that particular decade — but Felipe VI trying to modernize an old institution like the Spanish monarchy…
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July 1, 2026
Alastair Cook — Alistair
I don't know a great deal about cricket, but I understand endurance, and Alastair Cook's whole career sounds built on it — becoming England's all-time leading run-scorer in Test cricket isn't a matter of one brilliant…
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July 1, 2026
Alistair Cooke — Alistair
Alistair Cooke hosted Masterpiece Theatre for over two decades, which in television terms is basically the tenure of a tenured professor, or maybe a long-running sitcom that somehow never got canceled and never jumped…
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July 1, 2026
Alistair Overeem — Alistair
Alistair Overeem held championships across multiple major combat sports organizations, which as someone who gets nervous doing five minutes of comedy in front of forty people at a bar, is a level of composure under…
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June 30, 2026
Gordon Banks — Gordon
There's a famous photograph of one of Gordon Banks's saves that's basically perfect composition — body fully extended, ball just out of frame, the whole shape of the image telling you everything about the effort…
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June 30, 2026
Gordon Lightfoot — Gordon
Never was much for folk music growing up in the mill towns around here, but Gordon Lightfoot's the kind of songwriter even a steelworker can respect, because a song like "If You Could Read My Mind" isn't built on flash,…
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June 30, 2026
Gordon Ramsay — Gordon
Plating, at its best, is basically graphic design you can eat — composition, negative space, a single accent color drawing the eye — and Gordon Ramsay built an entire global brand partly on being exacting about…
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June 29, 2026
Nigel Hawthorne — Nigel
I don't get out to many pictures these days, but I remember The Madness of King George being the kind of serious, dignified film they don't seem to make as often anymore, and Nigel Hawthorne's performance in it earned…