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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April 6, 2026
Olivia de Havilland — Olivia
Two Academy Awards for 'Gone with the Wind' and 'The Heiress' would be plenty of legacy for most actresses, but Olivia de Havilland's real staying power, as far as I'm concerned, is the lawsuit — the one she brought…
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April 6, 2026
Olivia Newton-John — Olivia
You know how the best players sometimes have a second act that matters more than the first? That's Olivia Newton-John for me. Everybody remembers 'Grease' and 'Physical,' Grammy wins, the whole run of hits — that's a…
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April 5, 2026
Cecilia Bartoli — Cecilia
Cecilia Bartoli is considered one of the finest mezzo-sopranos of her generation, and what I find genuinely cool about her is that a huge part of her career has been reviving forgotten Baroque repertoire — basically…
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April 5, 2026
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin — Cecilia
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin figured out, in her doctoral thesis no less, that stars are made mostly of hydrogen and helium, which apparently transformed the whole field of astrophysics, and I'll admit that's not the kind…
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April 5, 2026
Saint Cecilia — Cecilia
Saint Cecilia's been venerated as the patron saint of musicians for something like eighteen centuries now, remembered in art and poetry and music composed specifically in her name, which is its own kind of staying power…
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April 4, 2026
Beverly Cleary — Beverly
Beverly Cleary wrote the Ramona books and the Henry Huggins books, and I have to admit I only really came to know her name properly once my daughter was small and we were reading through library copies together at…
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April 4, 2026
Beverly Johnson — Beverly
Beverly Johnson was the first Black woman ever to grace the cover of American Vogue, and I want you to sit with that for a second the way I had to when I first read it — an entire industry, and it took until her for…
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April 4, 2026
Beverly Sills — Beverly
Beverly Sills was one of the great coloratura sopranos, they say, before she went on to run arts organizations later in her life, which I find nearly as impressive as the singing itself. Most folks are lucky to be…
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April 3, 2026
Paula Abdul — Paula
Paula Abdul was a Grammy-winning singer and choreographer before most people my kids' age ever knew her as a judge on American Idol, which tells you something about how many separate careers one person can actually…
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April 3, 2026
Paula Patton — Paula
Paula Patton's been in some pictures I actually have heard of — that Mission Impossible one my grandkids made me watch, and Precious, which is a hard picture but an important one, from what I understand. She's known…
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April 3, 2026
Paula Radcliffe — Paula
Paula Radcliffe set a marathon world record that stood for well over a decade, which if you think about it in mill terms is like holding a plant production record for years running, nobody else in the whole industry…
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April 2, 2026
Bonnie Blair — Bonnie
Bonnie Blair won five Olympic gold medals in speed skating, which puts her among the most decorated athletes in Winter Olympics history, and also makes me think about how insane it is that we expect people to peak,…