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.
-
May 8, 2026
Yvonne De Carlo — Yvonne
Yvonne De Carlo is best known now for playing Lily Munster on "The Munsters," which if you think about it is a pretty specific kind of comeback story in itself — an actress who'd already had a real career finding a…
-
May 8, 2026
Yvonne Strahovski — Yvonne
Yvonne Strahovski built a career across genuinely different registers — "Chuck," a comedy, and "The Handmaid's Tale," about as heavy a drama as television gets — and getting real praise in both is harder than people…
-
May 7, 2026
Sylvia Earle — Sylvia
Sylvia Earle has led over a hundred ocean expeditions and spent a whole career championing marine conservation, which is the kind of job that actually requires real physical toughness on top of the science — she's not…
-
May 7, 2026
Sylvia Pankhurst — Sylvia
Sylvia Pankhurst spent her life in the fight for women's voting rights and international human rights causes, and man, if that's not the ultimate underdog story I don't know what is — going up against an entire…
-
May 7, 2026
Sylvia Plath — Sylvia
Sylvia Plath's poetry collection "The Colossus" and her novel "The Bell Jar" secured her place as one of the most influential writers of her generation, and I confess I return to her work more than almost any other…
-
May 6, 2026
Empress Matilda — Matilda
Empress Matilda spent years fighting for her right to the English throne back in the 1100s, and her claim actually set important precedents in English constitutional history even though she never fully secured the crown…
-
May 6, 2026
Matilda Joslyn Gage — Matilda
Matilda Joslyn Gage was one of the leading voices of the 19th-century women's rights movement, writing and organizing at a time when doing that kind of work came with real personal and financial risk, not just social…
-
May 6, 2026
Matilda of Flanders — Matilda
Matilda of Flanders was queen consort of England as William the Conqueror's wife, and she played a real role in medieval Anglo-Norman politics beyond the purely ceremonial version of "queen" that gets remembered…
-
May 5, 2026
Harriet Beecher Stowe — Harriet
Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin," a novel that genuinely galvanized abolitionist sentiment in the years before the Civil War — one of those rare instances where a piece of literature can be said to have…
-
May 5, 2026
Harriet Tubman — Harriet
Harriet Tubman escaped slavery and then went back, repeatedly, to lead others out through the Underground Railroad, then served as a Civil War scout on top of that, and stayed an activist her whole life after —…
-
May 5, 2026
Harriet Walter — Harriet
Harriet Walter is known now for "Succession" but built a long career on stage with the Royal Shakespeare Company well before that, which tells me the visible, famous part of her career came a long time after the actual…
-
May 4, 2026
Florence Griffith Joyner — Florence
Florence Griffith Joyner, "Flo-Jo," still holds the world records in the 100m and 200m, records that have stood since the 1980s, which in a sport where records usually get broken every few years is basically unheard of…