Names make news. Last week these names made this news:

In a speech to the Chattanooga Bar Association, Manhattan's Federal Judge Harold R. Medina recalled some of the pressure he endured during the 1949 trial of the eleven U.S. Communist leaders in Manhattan. It began, said the judge, about a month after Defense Secretary James Forrestal jumped to his death from a hospital window. Somehow the Communists learned that Medina had a fear of high places and capitalized on this weakness. They plagued him with pickets carrying placards reading "Medina will fall like Forrestal," and cryptic letters and anonymous phone calls repeating again & again the word jump. Said Medina: "It got so I just didn't dare go near a window. You laugh now. You think it's funny, but by golly, it nearly worked."

Buckingham Palace announced that Field Marshal Sir William Slim, 61, who began his army career as an enlisted private and was appointed Chief of the Imperial General Staff in 1948, will leave the War Office in November to be Governor General of Australia. Slim's successor: Sir John Harding, now commander in chief of the British Army of the Rhine.

On the terrace of Graasten Castle, the royal summer home near Sonderborg, Jutland, King Frederilc of Denmark, with Queen Ingrid, the Princesses Anne-Marie, 6, Benedikte, 8, and Margrethe, 12, posed for a family portrait wearing souvenir gifts from their recent visit to Greenland. The King wore a white Anorak, a soft cotton turtleneck shirt; the Queen and her daughters modeled Kamikker boots and pearl-embroidered sealskin dresses.

Meanwhile, the future of Margrethe was being considered. The Danish Cabinet has asked Parliament to vote on a constitutional amendment to the rule that succession to the throne goes to male heirs only. If the amendment is adopted, Margrethe will be the next sovereign and the first Danish Queen since Margrethe I, who died in 1412 after a reign of 25 years.

In Santa Monica, Cinemactress Teresa (Something to Live For) Wright, 32, decided she had had enough "grievous mental suffering," filed divorce papers against Novelist-Scriptwriter Niven (Duel in the Sun) Busch, 49, and asked for custody of their two children.

Sob Singer Johnnie Ray wailed that his arrest at the Boston airport as a common drunk was "all a mistake." His explanation: "I fell asleep at that airport. Pretty soon someone came and woke me up and told me to come with them. I went. I thought they were my managers . . . When I woke up two hours later, I found I wasn't in that plane at all. I was in jail. I was pretty upset."

In St. Louis, Stuart Symington, the Democratic nominee for Senator from Missouri, filed his expenses for a hard-fought campaign. The total: $15,070, which included $6.63 spent for a stepladder used to tack up campaign posters.

The Bureau of Internal Revenue announced that it had settled its complicated tax score with Vienna-born Violinist Fritz Kreisler, who took French citizenship in 1939, became a U.S. citizen in 1943. The government wanted a total of $1,384,513.67 in back income taxes for the years 1926-40, when Kreisler was a nonresident alien performing in the U.S. But after trying to unsnarl the hopelessly jumbled records, the Treasury decided to settle for $300,000. Said Kreisler: "I have not the slightest commercial sense." His wife Harriet put it more bluntly: "He knows nothing, nothing. He can only fiddle, fiddle, fiddle."

Still touring the U.S., Iraq's young King Feisal began the desert phase of his visit. He was properly impressed with Hoover Dam, but the highlight was in Las Vegas, Nev., where his hosts gave him something to impress the folks back home. Learning that he was a gun collector, they presented him with an old single-action .45 Colt and a five-gallon hat to match.

Blanche Patch, onetime secretary to the late George Bernard Shaw, explained in a letter to the London Times why Shaw three or four times refused to accept the British Order of Merit decoration. He said, wrote Miss Patch, that "I need no publicity . . . Either I shall be remembered as a playwright as long as Aristophanes and rank with Shakespeare and Moliere. or I shall be a forgotten clown before the end of the century."

Members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the largest and most powerful affiliate of the A.F.L., were told that Daniel J. Tobin, 77, their president since 1907, will retire next month. Probable successor: 58-year-old Executive Vice President Dave Beck of Seattle.

Humorist H. Allen (Life in a Putty Knife Factory) Smith advertised in his local paper for a handyman to work for $1.50 an hour on his country place in Mt. Kisco, N.Y. Smith's requirements: "Must furnish own transportation. Weight 180, height 6 foot one. Must have good teeth. Ugly. Dress optional. Must know how to cut grass, rake, putty, sodder. start fires, put out fires, rescue people from burning buildings, mix concrete, prune things, whistle through teeth, fix television set, shovel snow, put up with loudmouthed guests, invigorate plants, spade, listen to me talk, forecast the weather, dig bait, cope with insects, open stuck windows, use telephone, oil 70 motors, name the Presidents in chronological order, kill wasps, name the trees, must be a Giant fan. Must carry folding rule in hip pocket. If carried in side pocket, won't hire. Applicant must be able to distinguish between a bird and a sheep."

Once again, the loveliest in the land met at Atlantic City to stand up and be judged. The winner, and Miss America for 1953 Neva Jane Langley, a green-eyed brunette from Georgia. Statistics: 19 years old, 5 ft. 6 1/4 in. tall, 118 Ibs., 35-in. bust, 23-in. waist, 35-in. hips.

Stella Walsh, 41, sprint star of the 1932 Olympic games, who still holds the national pentathlon title, was arrested in a Glendale, Calif, grocery, charged with shoplifting. Her alleged take: a half-pound of butter, a carton of cottage cheese, a jar of peach jam. Total value: $1.44.

The Most Rev. Geoffrey Francis Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury, faced a battery of television cameras when he conducted his first service since arriving in the U.S. for a five-week visit. The location: Boston's Old North Church, where the lanterns were hung for Paul Revere. --

Senator Estes Kefauver, who made the coonskin cap his political trademark, arrived in Paris to find that the chapeau gag had followed him to France. With good grace, he followed a photographer's suggestion and posed with a railway porter's cap.

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