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 1, 2026
Ethel Merman — Ethel
I confess a soft spot for opera and classical music rather than Broadway belting, but I recognize genuine mastery of a craft when I encounter it, and Ethel Merman's decades as one of the twentieth century's great…
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March 1, 2026
Ethel Waters — Ethel
Okay, so imagine being the first Black woman ever nominated for an Emmy, and also the first to headline her own TV show, and doing it in an era with approximately zero playbook and maximum resistance — that's…
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February 28, 2026
Ida B. Wells — Ida
Every kid I've ever coached, I tell them the same thing: the hardest plays are the ones nobody's clapping for you to make. Ida B. Wells made those plays her whole life, documenting and campaigning against lynching in…
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February 28, 2026
Ida Lupino — Ida
Ida Lupino directed her own films in 1950s Hollywood at a time when almost no women were allowed anywhere near that chair, and she used that rare position to tackle genuinely bold social issues on screen instead of…
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February 28, 2026
Ida Tarbell — Ida
Ida Tarbell did the meticulous, grinding reporting that basically invented modern investigative journalism, and I think about how much unpaid or underpaid digging that kind of work must have taken before anybody called…
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February 27, 2026
Vera Lynn — Vera
Donna and I dance in the kitchen sometimes to the old songs, and Vera Lynn's music was the kind that got whole countries through wars, which is a different kind of labor than most people give singers credit for. 'We'll…
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February 27, 2026
Vera Rubin — Vera
Vera Rubin's observations provided the key evidence for dark matter, transforming astrophysics, and as a condensed matter physicist myself, I confess a particular fondness for scientists whose careful, patient…
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February 27, 2026
Vera Wang — Vera
There's a particular kind of pressure in making something for the most important day of someone's life, and Vera Wang built an entire celebrated career out of exactly that pressure, designing wedding dresses worn by…
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February 26, 2026
Constance Baker Motley — Constance
I was one of very few Black women in my doctoral cohort at Cornell, so I read about Constance Baker Motley with a particular, personal recognition — she was the first Black woman named to sit on a U.S. federal bench,…
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February 26, 2026
Constance Bennett — Constance
One does enjoy tracing a name like Constance Bennett back through the family trees of old Hollywood, and I confess a particular delight in discovering that she was, by most accounts, one of the best-compensated…
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February 26, 2026
Constance Wu — Constance
Constance Wu her lead roles in Crazy Rich Asians and on Fresh Off the Boat hit different for people like me who grew up basically never seeing anyone who looked like our families on screen — like, I remember exactly…
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February 25, 2026
Franklin Chang-Diaz — Franklin
I spent thirty-four years on a mill floor, so I don't pretend to understand the physics behind flying a Space Shuttle seven times, but I understand what it takes to keep showing up to a job most people would find…