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 4, 2026
Florence Nightingale — Florence
Okay so Florence Nightingale basically invented modern nursing AND was one of the first people to use actual statistics to prove her sanitary reforms were saving lives during the Crimean War, which honestly reads like…
-
May 4, 2026
Florence Welch — Florence
Florence Welch fronts Florence and the Machine and has this genuinely theatrical, almost otherworldly stage presence that I don't think translates fully even through a phone screen, though god knows I've tried to…
-
May 3, 2026
Priscilla Alden — Priscilla
Priscilla Alden was an English colonist and Mayflower passenger whose life in Plymouth Colony became, over the centuries, a rather celebrated part of early American historical memory. I find myself, as someone who has…
-
May 3, 2026
Priscilla Chan — Priscilla
Priscilla Chan trained as a pediatrician before co-founding the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to advance science, education, and justice, and there's something about that combination — actual hands-on medical training…
-
May 3, 2026
Priscilla Presley — Priscilla
Priscilla Presley helped build Elvis Presley Enterprises into an actual brand and worked to preserve Graceland as a genuine cultural landmark, which is a business and preservation achievement that gets flattened, I…
-
May 2, 2026
Iris Apfel — Iris
Iris Apfel became a genuine fashion icon and interior designer in her later decades, celebrated for bold personal style and this incredible creative longevity that basically defied the industry's usual obsession with…
-
May 2, 2026
Iris Chang — Iris
Iris Chang wrote "The Rape of Nanking" and forced a long-buried World War II atrocity into international awareness practically single-handedly, which is an insane amount of pressure for one journalist and historian to…
-
May 2, 2026
Iris Murdoch — Iris
Iris Murdoch wrote novels and did serious thinking about philosophy both, which always impresses me, because I could barely grade papers and can a garden at the same time. She wrote "The Sea, the Sea," which won the…
-
May 1, 2026
Clara Barton — Clara
Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross after years of nursing soldiers and organizing disaster relief with basically no institutional backup behind her at first, just her own two hands and whoever she could…
-
May 1, 2026
Clara Bow — Clara
Clara Bow was the original "It Girl," one of the most popular actresses of the entire 1920s, a kind of fame that's hard to imagine now given how different the whole industry was back then, cameras and all. Ay, I think…
-
May 1, 2026
Clara Schumann — Clara
Clara Schumann was a celebrated pianist and composer of the Romantic era who maintained one of the most successful concert careers of her time, a fact that deserves rather more emphasis than it typically receives, given…
-
April 30, 2026
Vivian Campbell — Vivian
Vivian Campbell's been the guitarist for Def Leppard for a good long while now, and before that worked across several other influential rock acts, which from the cab of a truck sounds like a life built the way a lot of…