When you’re cursed with a humiliating name, it can feel like there’s no way to outlive it—like you could change the course of history and still only be remembered as the guy whose parents named him “Dick Small.” It’s a pain known too well by every little boy named Willie and every substitute teacher who’s had to tell her class that her name is “Mrs. Cockswell.”
Some people, though, didn’t let that stop them. They went out into the world and did incredible things—the types of things we’d learn about in every history class if we could only get through a unit without middle schoolers giggling at every mention of “Bushrod Johnson” or “Emperor Pupienus.”
