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.
-
July 23, 2026
Oscar Robertson — Oscar
Oscar Robertson, "The Big O," became in 1962 the first NBA player ever to average a triple-double for an entire season, a feat so rare it wasn't matched again for over fifty years afterward. Fifty years is longer than…
-
July 23, 2026
Oscar Wilde — Oscar
Oscar Wilde wrote "The Picture of Dorian Gray" and "The Importance of Being Earnest," and he's remembered above all for a wit and a mastery of language that still gets quoted well over a century after he put pen to…
-
July 22, 2026
Bruce Lee — Bruce
Bruce Lee was a martial artist and actor whose films, "Enter the Dragon" especially, brought martial arts to a truly global audience and made him an enduring cultural icon well beyond just the sport itself. I don't know…
-
July 22, 2026
Bruce Springsteen — Bruce
Bruce Springsteen, known to most simply as "The Boss," has spent his career chronicling working-class American life across albums like "Born to Run," and he's equally celebrated for marathon live performances that, by…
-
July 22, 2026
Bruce Willis — Bruce
Bruce Willis built a long career across both action and drama, the "Die Hard" franchise most of all, and stayed a genuinely admired figure through decades of memorable performances across a wide range of roles rather…
-
July 21, 2026
Bob Dylan — Dylan
Bob Dylan wrote "Blowin' in the Wind" and a whole catalog of other songs that became anthems of social change, and he ended up a Nobel laureate in Literature on top of reshaping popular music across a career that's now…
-
July 21, 2026
Dylan O'Brien — Dylan
Dylan O'Brien became a genuine leading man in Hollywood through "The Maze Runner" film series and the television show "Teen Wolf," building a career that's held up well past the initial YA-franchise wave that first made…
-
July 21, 2026
Dylan Thomas — Dylan
Dylan Thomas gave us "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" and the radio drama "Under Milk Wood," both still widely read and performed today, decades and decades after he wrote them, which is about as close to visual…
-
July 20, 2026
Isaac Asimov — Isaac
Isaac Asimov was a prolific science fiction author and biochemist whose "Foundation" series helped define an entire genre and inspired generations of both readers and working scientists after him, which strikes me as a…
-
July 20, 2026
Isaac Hayes — Isaac
Isaac Hayes wrote and performed the Oscar-winning "Theme from Shaft," which helped define the whole sound of 1970s movies, and by every account he stayed a generous, longtime supporter of charitable causes back home in…
-
July 20, 2026
Isaac Newton — Isaac
Isaac Newton's laws of motion and universal gravitation laid the whole foundation for classical mechanics, and on top of that his work helped develop calculus, which means pretty much every engineer who ever designed a…
-
July 19, 2026
Noah Lyles — Noah
Noah Lyles won Olympic gold in the 100 meters at the 2024 Paris Games, which puts him, officially, among the fastest human beings who have ever lived, a title that sounds almost comically absolute when you say it out…