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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May 24, 2026
Renata Scotto — Renata
Renata Scotto was known for her dramatic interpretations across decades at the Metropolitan Opera, which tells me this was somebody who didn't just have a good voice once and coast on it, but kept finding new depth in…
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May 24, 2026
Renata Tebaldi — Renata
Renata Tebaldi was celebrated for the sheer beauty of her voice across a long career at the world's leading opera houses, which is the kind of sustained excellence that takes real physical and emotional discipline to…
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May 23, 2026
Marguerite de Navarre — Marguerite
Marguerite de Navarre was a Renaissance queen who also happened to write the Heptaméron, a collection of stories that made her one of the most influential writers of her whole era, which is a genuinely absurd amount of…
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May 23, 2026
Marguerite Duras — Marguerite
Marguerite Duras wrote "The Lover," an autobiographical novel that won the Prix Goncourt, and from what I understand she was also a filmmaker on top of being one of France's most significant authors, which is a…
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May 23, 2026
Marguerite Perey — Marguerite
Marguerite Perey discovered the element francium and became the first woman elected to the French Academy of Sciences, which as someone with a half-finished English degree I did not regret leaving, I find genuinely…
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May 22, 2026
Alicia Alonso — Alicia
Alicia Alonso founded the National Ballet of Cuba and performed into her seventies, which as someone who mostly gets her exercise pushing a stroller for miles these days, is an absolutely staggering physical and…
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May 22, 2026
Alicia Keys — Alicia
Alicia Keys can flat play a piano and sing besides, and songs like "Fallin'" and "Empire State of Mind" have made her one of the most honored artists of her time. I'll confess most modern music doesn't have a tune you…
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May 22, 2026
Alicia Vikander — Alicia
Alicia Vikander won an Academy Award for "The Danish Girl" and also built a whole other kind of career through the "Tomb Raider" franchise, which is a wider range of work than a lot of actors manage — prestige drama…
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May 21, 2026
Sara Bareilles — Sara
Sara Bareilles wrote hits like "Love Song" and then went and composed the Broadway musical "Waitress," which is honestly a pretty serious range move — going from radio pop songwriter to writing a full stage score is…
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May 21, 2026
Sara Blakely — Sara
Sara Blakely founded Spanx and became one of the youngest self-made female billionaires, and the word that actually matters in that sentence to me is "self-made" — she started that company with her own money, no…
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May 21, 2026
Sara Teasdale — Sara
Sara Teasdale won a Pulitzer Prize for lyrical, emotionally direct poetry, which is a kind of writing I find myself drawn back to more since becoming a mother, honestly — there's less patience these days for anything…
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May 20, 2026
Nina Dobrev — Nina
Nina Dobrev built her name playing a lead role on "The Vampire Diaries" and has since gone on to a broader career across film and television, which strikes me, watching from a considerable and rather old-fashioned…