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It's still the most unbelievably ironic name for a pioneer/inventor.

There's a computer architect with the surname Lowe-Power https://cs.ucdavis.edu/directory/jason-lowe-power

I fondly remember reading a book for computer architecture from an author called "Linda Null"

There is also the Japanese computer scientist named Eiichi Goto. Among other things he invented the parametron, which tops my list of coolest logic circuit names and which may or may not eventally make a comeback in reversible quantum computing.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiichi_Goto

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parametron

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkQySlx4OLc

On the contrary, innovation is often about being great at doing things "good enough" so that you can rapidly advance to the frontiers. Innovators must be pragmatic, and so they leave perfectionists in the dust.

Perhaps he meant to write "iconic" but misspelled, there's even a song in his name featured in Back To The Future.

What song ?

Johnny B Goode?

Doh

I see your John Goodenough, and I raise you the Outerbridge Crossing. At the southern edge of New York City, way down near the bottom of Staten Island, it’s named after the first chairman of the Port Authority: Mr. Eugenius Harvey Outerbridge.

In Italy they still fondly remember a TV host whose (real, not stage) name was Mike Bongiorno. Buon giorno ("good day") is a standard salutation like good morning. He was Mike. an utterly US name, because he was born in New York.

Is Bongiorno a common last name in Italy, or is it also a product of his ancestors migrating to the US?

How last names can change is fascinating to me. I have cousins who would have had the same last name as my (Chinese) grandfather, except for the fact that that my grandfather emigrated from Indonesia to the Netherlands before it became independent, and their branch of the family did so afterwards. Meaning Indonesia forced them to change their last names.

Bongiorno is a regional (Venetian?) or historical spelling; it may be less common in Italy than outside of Italy these days. Wikipedia lists most of the prominent living people with the name as being in Australia, the USA, or Argentina, though there's a few Italians. Buongiorno (the current Italian spelling, extra "u") is a common enough Italian last name.

Random, does anyone know how this name is actually pronounced (or, rather, how he pronounced it)? I think it would be awesome if it were actually "good enough".

Did some searching online but all the results seemed of dubious quality.

I was wondering if it might be pronounced “good-in-ow”.

If that'd be so, it might come from a "make it sound and spell English" Goodenowe, Godunov, Gudanowski etc.

Lo-and-behold John Goodenough is from Thuringia, Germany, born to Jewish parents, father Erwin Ramsdell Goodenough. So quite likely the name was transcribed at some point in history, even if not documented in Wikipedia et. al. very publicly, we can see that his father in turn seems to come from said "Goodenows" via the references link in the father's Wikipedia page [1].

So all in all, good guess!

[1] https://books.google.ca/books?id=Ak1MAAAAMAAJ&q=Helen+(Lewis...

But according to the Wikipedia page John Goodenough's dad, Erwin Ramsdell Goodenough, was born in Brooklyn and the son of Ward Hunt Goodenough. The links suggest he stemmed from a family that emigrated to America in the 17th century.

All the above info I gave is from said Wikipedia page including the link. It's the reference (number 3) that the Wikipedia page for John's father gave.

I have not done any source work. I'm trusting Wikipedia here.

Just speculating, but -enau is a common town name ending in German, a person from that place might be name -enauer (see Adenauer). There is a Gudenau Castle in west Germany. Gudenauer would have been an excellent candidate for Ellis Island-fication

Have the same last name, just pronounced "good enough" as it looks. Have met a few other unrelated families from different countries with the same last name and never heard it pronounced differently either - perhaps historically though.

As I've seen and heard it, it's pronounced "Goodnow"

I think it's apropos considering the absolute longevity of lithium ion batteries across industries despite research labs producing significantly better prototypes for decades.

I am surprised no politician (that I am aware of) has legally changed their name to Lower Taxes before running for election, seems like they’d be a shoe-in with little effort.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Mover

Just so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_Looper

Especially this bit:

> In Los Angeles County, a candidate by the name of John "Lower Taxes" Loew has run in every election for county assessor between 2000 and 2018. He explained that he changed his name in order to send a message about his political positions.[30] [31] In 2000, Loew received less than 1% of the vote[32] in the special election to fill a vacancy in the office. In 2002 and 2006, Loew lost the elections to incumbent Rick Auerbach by a 70%–11% margin in 2002,[33] and by a 77%–23% margin in 2006.[34] Loew ran again in 2010, where he finished in third place with 10.6% of the vote.[35] In 2014 he finished in fourth place with 9.47% of the vote.[36] In 2018 Loew again ran with the name "Lower Taxes" on the ballot and ended up in second place with 23.58%, forcing incumbent Jeffrey Prang into a runoff.[37] Loew lost the runoff to Prang by a margin of a little over 20%.[38]

I stand corrected

Ok, this took me down the rabbit hole. Life imitates fiction.

When I first read "John Goodenough has died" (which was an actual headline here) I thought of "just another" overdone headline for excellence coaching or motivational GTD training...

Still sad that it wasn't about that.

If many surnames came from people's professions, does that mean that one of his ancestors was simply considered to be... good enough?

That is actually the most likely explaination for the origins of the name (basically as a nickname)

I'm still wondering how such surnames come to be. In Poland, it feels like some 25%+ of surnames are nicknames / descriptors of a person that aren't just naming someone's occupation. A fraction of them is weird or even derogatory. My own surname literally means "a bad roof", and that's actually on the tame side compared to surnames of some people I know, or know of.

Or the international relations (peace/war studies) scholar Anne Marie Slaughter

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