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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May 20, 2026
Nina Simone — Nina
Nina Simone was a singer, pianist, and civil rights activist whose music still stands as some of the most influential of the whole twentieth century, and I'll say plain, I didn't grow up listening to much of it in the…
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May 20, 2026
Nina Totenberg — Nina
Nina Totenberg has covered the Supreme Court for NPR for decades and become one of the most authoritative legal-affairs correspondents in the country doing it, which is the kind of long, patient beat-reporting career I…
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May 19, 2026
Adriana Barraza — Adriana
Adriana Barraza got an Oscar nomination for her role in "Babel," a Mexican actress holding her own on the biggest stage acting has to offer, and from what I understand she'd been working steadily for years before that…
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May 19, 2026
Adriana Lima — Adriana
Adriana Lima was one of the longest-running Victoria's Secret Angels and one of the highest-paid models in the world, which on its face sounds like pure glamour, but "longest-running" is the word that actually catches…
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May 19, 2026
Adriana Trigiani — Adriana
Adriana Trigiani writes best-selling, warm, character-driven fiction, and I'll be honest, novels aren't usually my department — give me a sports documentary over a book most days — but "warm and character-driven" is…
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May 18, 2026
Marie Curie — Marie
Marie Curie won Nobel Prizes in two different sciences — physics and chemistry — which as someone who briefly, and unsuccessfully, attempted a Master's in data science before bailing for a startup, is a level of…
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May 18, 2026
Marie Kondo — Marie
Marie Kondo turned "does this spark joy" into a genuinely global movement, which is a wild business outcome for what started as a very personal, very specific philosophy about folding shirts. I'm deep in FIRE-forum,…
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May 18, 2026
Marie Tharp — Marie
Marie Tharp mapped the ocean floor in painstaking detail and that map ended up providing crucial evidence for plate tectonics, one of the biggest paradigm shifts in earth science, and for a long time her male colleagues…
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May 17, 2026
Lucía Bosé — Lucia
Lucía Bosé became a star of postwar Italian cinema and then kept a career going afterward in Spain too, which means she had to rebuild professional footing in a whole different country and industry rather than just…
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May 17, 2026
Lucia Popp — Lucia
Lucia Popp was a Slovak operatic soprano celebrated at the world's leading opera houses, and I'll be honest, opera isn't exactly what's playing through my cab most nights — it runs more toward classic country and…
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May 17, 2026
Saint Lucia — Lucia
Saint Lucia is venerated for her charity toward the poor, and her memory is now kept each December through the Scandinavian Saint Lucy's Day festival of light, candles and all, which is such a beautifully visual way for…
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May 16, 2026
Chiara Ferragni — Chiara
Chiara Ferragni took one of the first major global fashion blogs and built it into an actual business empire, which as someone who started a bakery with savings and a genuinely terrifying loan, I recognize the shape of…