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

Adlai Stevenson sat restlessly through a long-winded introduction of himself at an independent voters' dinner in Chicago. When the glowing rhetoric finally ended, Stevenson rose and thanked his introducer: "I am not a candidate for anything at the moment, but all the same, I hope you don't lose that manuscript."

Oona O'Neill Chaplin, 28, daughter of the late Playwright Eugene O'Neill, fourth wife of Comedian Charlie Chaplin, 65, and mother of five of his nine children, dropped in at the U.S. embassy in London and renounced her U.S. citizen ship. Thus, like her London-born husband who from his classic film roles piled up an estimated $20 million during 42 years as an alien resident of the U.S., Oona became a British subject. Chaplin, who faces a Justice Department grilling on leftish and immorality charges if he ever tries to re-enter the U.S., was "proud" of Oona's new status.

Nobel Prizewinning Scientist Irene Joliot-Curie, whose ardent fellow traveling got her kicked off France's Atomic Energy Commission in 1951, was denied membership in the American Chemical Society, which bluntly branded her "an avowed and active" Red.

Actress Katharine Hepburn, 44, traveling in slacks as usual, arrived in England to discuss playing the title role in a movie of George Bernard Shaw's The Millionairess, the play which seemed tailored to order for her.

In Duluth, the last survivor of some 2,675,000 Union Army veterans, onetime Drummer Boy Albert Woolson, chalked up another year of his sprightly second century, puffed out 107 candles on his birthday cake.

The pursuit of Rita Hayworth and her debt-ridden husband. Crooner Dick Haymes, by Dick's creditors began to resemble the chase sequence in a grade B western. Earlier this month Dick and Rita barricaded themselves in a Manhattan ho tel suite, while outside two deputy sheriffs waited to serve Dick with an alimony arrears warrant sworn out by his second wife, Cinemactress Joanne Dru. Last week in Greenwich, Conn., more sheriff's men, took up a vigil in the 14-room furnished mansion Haymes had rented. This time, Rita and groom were charged by their landlord with being $675 behind on the rent, plus a $4.000 mauling of the house's antique furniture.

In Missouri, where a small drive is rolling to install Harry S. Truman as president of the state university, Truman showed up in Columbia, site of the school, and squelched his boosters. Snorted he: "If I had wanted to stay in trouble, I would have stayed in the White House."

Grass-rooters who hoped to elect retired Army General James A. Van Fleet, 61, as Florida's Republican governor this fall were withered (though not permanently blighted) by their resolutely unwilling candidate, who bluntly announced: "After many conferences with persons of substance and influence, I have come to the conclusion that I am not presently equipped to enter politics."

In Hiroshima, moments after a Japanese newscaster announced that Cinemactress Marilyn Monroe had headed for the local baseball park to watch her husband Joe DiMaggio coach rookies, some 5,000 panting radio listeners headed for the park to watch Marilyn watch Joe.

Britain's royal family observed a golden wedding anniversary. A quiet celebration was held in Kensington Palace for the spry Earl of Athlone, 79, great-uncle of Queen Elizabeth, onetime Governor-General of the Union of South Africa (1923-31) and Canada (1940-46), and his handsome wife, Princess Alice, 70, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria.

After Britain's New Statesman and Nation waggishly caricatured her in drawing and word ("Queen Edith [whose] mask is elaborate . . . eye-sockets . . . thumbed by a master") and accused her of "riding the elephant of publicity in Hollywood," cadaverous Poetess Edith (Faqade) Sitwell, like a glacier overriding a grounded gnat, coolly crushed the New Statesman's slurs. Her letter to the editor: "I cannot see that . . . my appearance and personality are the affair of any but my personal acquaintances . . . They are not, as [your correspondent] suggests, an 'achievement' but are . . . inherited. I am not descended from my father only, but also from my maternal grandmother's family. You will therefore see that same appearance and personality in the effigies of the Planta-genets in Westminster Abbey."

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