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

In an outburst of whimsy, with gesture to match, veteran Comedian Charlie Chaplin, celebrating his 68th birthday at his Swiss chalet, piped: "When you're 68, you don't want to cut a birthday cake. You want to cut your throat!" Chaplin's devoted wife, Oona O'Neill Chaplin, 31 and soon expecting her sixth child, laughed nervously as Chaplin displayed a frighteningly realistic flash of his old pantomimic genius, faintly tinged with ham.

France's precocious Novelist Franchise (Bonjour Tristesse) Sagan, 21, owner of a Jaguar, a Buick, a Gordini racer and an Aston-Martin, is a madcap hot-rodder who once exulted: "I like to drive 200 kilometers an hour [125 m.p.h.] barefooted!" Last week she was expected to survive after her Aston-Martin, tooling along an unobstructed highway south of Paris on a clear day, left the road and somersaulted in a field.

While undergoing his recent $129,000 ordeal by question, TV Quiz Whiz Charles Van Doren (TIME, Feb. 11) hired comely Geraldine Ann Bernstein, 23, away from London Records, Inc. to be his secretary. At that time, Geraldine, a New York University English major, was earning $4,160 annually v. Van Doren's $4,400 a year as an English instructor at Columbia. Together, they answered thousands of fan letters (mostly handout entreaties) that swamped Van Doren. Along the way, the couple chivalrously rejected a passel of outright marriage proposals. Another proposal--made by Van Doren himself--was accepted. In the Virgin Islands last week, Charles Van Doren, 31, answered one more question. His response ("I do") won him 1) Geraldine, 2) a tax saving of around $20,000, 3) a mother-in-law who cherishes him as "the answer to every mother's prayer." Bridegroom Van Doren then flashed the family code phrase to his joyful parents in Manhattan: "Worried today."*

Worming his way up through a big mound of original biographical information forms turned over to him by the publishers of Who's Who in America, Chicago Bookseller Ralph G. Newman emerged to announce that he had unearthed scads of tidbits on how the Who's Whoers see, or saw, themselves. Some of Biographile Newman's findings in his initial browsing among more than 1,000,000 forms: Dwight Eisenhower is "about the only man" who keeps on shortening rather than lengthening his write-up. Harry S. Truman keeps insisting that the S is a full middle name, thus should not have a period after it. /- For Who's Who's 1920-21 edition, Movie Vamp Theda Bara proudly pointed out that her papa had ceased to be a Goodman, was now legally Bernard Bara, to conform with her screen name. During World War I Lady Randolph Churchill (neee Jennie Jerome of Brooklyn) unaccountably failed to list Winston as her son. A correction from Harry Houdini: "I am not a magician, but a mystifier." General Electric Co.'s Wizard Charles Steinmetz described

*The garbled message received by Pulitzer Prizewinning Poet Mark Van Doren's parents when he married Charles's mother, Writer Dorothy Graffe, in 1922. Last week, however, the telegraph company suggested, helpfully, that Charlie might have meant "married."

/-In 1955 Truman formally accepted the honorary middle name of Swinomish, a moniker awarded him by the chief of Washington State's Swinomish Indians. himself as "electrician." Assistant Secretary of the Navy (1913-20) Franklin D. Roosevelt crossed out his "Episcopalian" church affiliation, did not restore it until the 1924-25 edition. Just before 1940's Republican Convention, Democrat Wendell Willkie prophetically retrieved his form, altered his political affiliation to "Republican."

Comic Eddie Cantor, 65 last January, was set to join the small roster of well-heeled showfolk collecting Social Security old-age benefits (some others: Francis X. Bushman, Marjorie Rambeau, James Gleason). Whenever Millionaire Cantor and wife Ida get their monthly $161.70 (for any month in which Eddie earns less than $80), they will forward it to a New York boys' camp where Cantor gamboled 53 summers ago.

Britain's bodkin-tongued, America-baiting Nancy (Love in a Cold Climate) Mitford,* 52, was induced to refight the Revolutionary War by the New York Herald Tribune's Paris Postscripter Art Buchwald. Asked what American she dislikes most, gentle Nancy, whose foot has never touched U.S. soil, replied: "Abraham Lincoln. I detest Abraham Lincoln. When I read the book The Day Lincoln Was Shot, I was so afraid he would go to the wrong theater. What was the name of that beautiful man who shot him?" "John Wilkes Booth." "Yes, I liked him very much!" Does Nancy like any other Americans? "Your freedom fighters ... the people who have left, and prefer to live abroad." And does Briton Mitford like Britons? "Not to live amongst," snapped Nancy. "I much prefer the French."

* Her late, Nazi-minded sister, Unity Freeman-Mitford, was once acclaimed by Adolf Hitler as the "perfect Nordic beauty."

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