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 12, 2026
Serena Ryder — Serena
Serena Ryder is a Canadian singer-songwriter with that soulful, kind of raw voice, Juno-Award-winning albums to back it up, and she's also been really open publicly about mental health struggles alongside the music…
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May 12, 2026
Serena Williams — Serena
Serena Williams is straight up one of the greatest tennis players who has ever picked up a racket, twenty-three Grand Slam singles titles, and I don't think people always sit with how insane that number actually is over…
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May 11, 2026
Bianca Andreescu — Bianca
Bianca Andreescu won the U.S. Open as a teenager in 2019, the first Canadian ever to take home a Grand Slam singles title, which is the kind of thing that would've made the front page of our little county paper for a…
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May 11, 2026
Bianca Balti — Bianca
Bianca Balti has had a genuinely decades-long career as an Italian supermodel, appearing in campaigns for major fashion houses well past the point where the industry usually discards people, especially women, for being…
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May 11, 2026
Bianca Jagger — Bianca
Bianca Jagger has spent decades now campaigning on human rights and the environment, which is a longer stretch of steady devotion to a cause than most folks manage, and she came to it from Nicaragua originally before…
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May 10, 2026
Fiona Apple — Fiona
Fiona Apple makes raw, poetic music, "Fetch the Bolt Cutters" among the critically acclaimed proof of it, and what gets me about her story is that raw honesty in art usually comes at a real cost to the person making it…
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May 10, 2026
Fiona Bruce — Fiona
Fiona Bruce has anchored BBC News and hosted "Antiques Roadshow" for many years, which is honestly a pretty striking range for one broadcasting career — hard news authority on one hand, warm, curious cultural…
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May 10, 2026
Fiona Shaw — Fiona
Fiona Shaw's known for the Harry Potter films and "Killing Eve," but from what I understand her real, sustained reputation was built on the stage long before either of those hit screens, which tracks with something I've…
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May 9, 2026
Greta Garbo — Greta
Greta Garbo was this legendary, almost mythically luminous screen presence during Hollywood's golden age, the kind of old-school movie star whose whole aura I only really know through clips my mom shows me, not through…
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May 9, 2026
Greta Gerwig — Greta
Greta Gerwig directed "Lady Bird" and "Barbie," two movies about growing up and figuring out who you are, and from what I hear she's become one of the leading filmmaking voices of her whole generation. I'll admit I…
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May 9, 2026
Greta Thunberg — Greta
Greta Thunberg started skipping school to sit outside parliament with a sign and somehow that turned into a genuinely global youth movement on climate action, which as a millennial-adjacent guy who still owes money on a…
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May 8, 2026
Yvonne Craig — Yvonne
Yvonne Craig is remembered fondly for playing Batgirl in the classic 1960s "Batman" series, a role that clearly meant a lot to generations of fans who grew up watching her on screen. Naku, I don't get much time for old…