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.
-
June 21, 2026
Keith Richards — Keith
Keith Richards co-founded The Rolling Stones and is still regarded as one of the most influential guitarists rock music has ever produced, which is wild considering how long that band has actually been together at this…
-
June 21, 2026
Keith Urban — Keith
Keith Urban built a career on crossing over — technically serious enough as a guitarist to impress musicians who don't even like country music, while writing hooks pop enough for people who've never owned a cowboy hat…
-
June 20, 2026
Roger Bannister — Roger
Roger Bannister became the first person ever to run a mile in under four minutes, a barrier that had apparently defeated every runner who'd attempted it before him, and then went on to have an entirely separate, serious…
-
June 20, 2026
Roger Federer — Roger
Roger Federer has 20 Grand Slam singles titles and also somehow made an entire sport look effortless in a way that's genuinely rare, the kind of player who turns "GOAT debates" into actual, semi-serious internet…
-
June 20, 2026
Roger Moore — Roger
Roger Moore spent years playing James Bond, this suave, indestructible guy who never seemed to sweat, and then he spent a good chunk of his later life as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, actually showing up in places most…
-
June 19, 2026
Craig David — Craig
Craig David had massive hits like "7 Days" and "Walking Away" that basically defined a whole British R&B and garage sound in a very specific era, the kind of songs that show up unexpectedly on a throwback playlist and…
-
June 19, 2026
Craig Ferguson — Craig
Craig Ferguson hosted The Late Late Show for a decade doing this loose, improvisational, kind of gloriously off-script style of late-night comedy that always felt like he was one bad night's sleep away from just saying…
-
June 19, 2026
Craig Venter — Craig
Craig Venter led one of the two teams that sequenced the human genome, and I appreciate that the historical record, at its most careful, insists on saying it that way — one of two — because there's a real and…
-
June 18, 2026
Alan Alda — Alan
Alan Alda spent years as one of the most recognizable faces on American television through M*A*S*H, and then did something I find genuinely admirable with the credibility that bought him: he became a serious, sustained…
-
June 18, 2026
Alan Rickman — Alan
Alan Rickman is, for an enormous number of people under a certain age, permanently fixed as Severus Snape, which is a strange kind of fame because it flattens a genuinely serious, decades-long stage and film career into…
-
June 18, 2026
Alan Turing — Alan
Alan Turing's codebreaking work at Bletchley Park is credited with actually shortening World War II, which is an enormous, almost hard-to-process kind of impact for one person's mathematical work to have had, and he's…
-
June 17, 2026
Ian Botham — Ian
Ian Botham is remembered as one of the greatest all-rounders cricket ever had, which just means the man refused to be pinned down to only batting or only bowling, he did both and did them well enough that nobody could…