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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March 9, 2026
June Carter Cash — June
June Carter Cash being a pillar of the actual Carter Family musical dynasty is one of those facts that recontextualizes basically all of American country music once you actually sit with it — like, there's a direct…
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March 9, 2026
June Foray — June
June Foray brought cartoon characters, Rocky the Flying Squirrel among them, alive across decades in animation, and honestly, that kind of behind-the-scenes longevity is exactly the underdog story I love finding in…
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March 8, 2026
Gwen Ifill — Gwen
Gwen Ifill became the first Black woman put in the anchor chair of a major national politics broadcast, a milestone I recognize the particular weight of, having been one of very few Black women in my own doctoral cohort…
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March 8, 2026
Gwen Stefani — Gwen
Gwen Stefani built a genuinely successful solo career on top of her work with No Doubt, which is its own kind of hustle most people don't think about — proving you can carry something on your own after already…
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March 8, 2026
Gwen Verdon — Gwen
I'll confess up front that modern dancing isn't my particular cup of tea, but I know talent and hard work when I read about it, and this Broadway dancer had both in spades, winning Tony after Tony and lighting up the…
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March 7, 2026
Ruth Bader Ginsburg — Ruth
I am an old-fashioned woman in most every way, but thirty-eight years teaching poor kids in a two-room schoolhouse taught me to root hard for anybody who got a rough start and made something of it anyway. This Supreme…
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March 7, 2026
Ruth Handler — Ruth
Ruth Handler co-founded Mattel and invented the Barbie doll, a piece of business history I approach with the same evidence-first instinct I bring to any claim: whatever one's opinion of the doll itself, the underlying…
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March 7, 2026
Ruth Westheimer — Ruth
Ruth Westheimer built decades of career on warm, candid public health advocacy as 'Dr. Ruth,' which I note approvingly as a physicist who has spent a career frustrated by both uninformed panic and glib…
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March 6, 2026
Pearl Bailey — Pearl
Pearl Bailey's Tony-winning warmth and charisma carried her across a genuinely trailblazing career on both Broadway and in film, and I note with some professional satisfaction that her success rested on decades of…
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March 6, 2026
Pearl Kendrick — Pearl
As a nurse of nearly thirty years, I have held so many children through fevers and coughs, and I think often about how much suffering was simply normal before people like Pearl Kendrick did the patient, unglamorous…
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March 6, 2026
Pearl S. Buck — Pearl
Pearl S. Buck won both a Nobel and a Pulitzer, mostly known for The Good Earth, but the part that actually got me was that she spent her life advocating for children's welfare beyond just the writing — like, she used…
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March 5, 2026
Gladys Aylward — Gladys
I don't scare easy, thirty-four years in a steel mill will do that to a man, but reading about Gladys Aylward leading dozens of orphaned children across mountains to safety during wartime China puts my nerve to shame.…