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

A fond dream of Playwright George Bernard Shaw, popular adoption of a king-size phonetic alphabet, is finally to get some development and promotion. Though G.B.S. left a tidy sum to his proposed ''alphabet trust," institutional beneficiaries under his will fought against relinquishing a farthing to further Shaw's idea (TIME, March 4); even his old friend Lady Astor dismissed it as "ridiculous." Last week's compromise in court: the public trustee of Shaw's estate announced that a maximum of $23,240 will be set aside for the project. A first prize of $1,400 will be offered for the best design of a "proposed British alphabet" concocted under Shavian rules. Later, Shaw's play Androcles and the Lion will be transliterated into the new letters, then printed and distributed throughout the English-speaking world for its enlightenment or mystification.

One of the U.S. Air Force's most eligible bachelors, rocket-sledding Colonel John Paul Stapp (TIME, Sept. 12, 1955), 47, now head of the Air Force's "Man in Space" Committee, is scheduled to crash through the matrimonial barrier. The bride: attractive ex-Ballerina Lillian Lanese, 33, who helps run an El Paso ballet school. Though noted for his amateur cookery (mostly steaks), Space Surgeon Stapp was not sure who will preside over the kitchen: "Just say we'll manage to eat!" Long billed as "the fastest [632 m.p.h.] man on earth," Dr. Stapp allowed that he began romancing Lillian only three months ago.

After artfully staying out of the public eye most of the time since their marriage nine weeks ago, Old (53) Groaner Bing Crosby and his bride, Cinemorsel Kathy (Operation Mad Ball) Grant, 24, ventured forth in Sunday best for the Hollywood premiere of The Bridge on the River Kwai. Brainy Kathy, a qualified cook by virtue of a college home-economics course, disclosed that she is now studying chemistry because, "I was a fine arts major [University of Texas], and I feel I have neglected the physical sciences. It's very good mental discipline."

On the 54th anniversary of the Wright brothers' first powered flight at Kitty Hawk, the National Aeronautic Association honored one of the airplane's best friends: Missouri's Democratic Senator Stuart Symington, first (1947-50) Secretary of the U.S. Air Force. For his "distinguished career of public service in the field of aviation," Stu Symington took a bow and got the annual Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy.

Japan's Crown Prince Akihito, 24 this week, reported to his three humble tutors on his studies of fish psychology. First, he had trained some salmon, bass and carp to associate their feeding time with the lighting of a red lamp. Having established a conditioned reflex which led the fish to expect food whenever the light was switched on. Akihito then impaired their vision by tinkering with their ophthalmic nerves. His scientific conclusion from the experiment (no surprise): the delicate operation caused the fish to "lose their previous ability to connect the lamp's red glow with food."

A hectic holiday week brought rock-'n'-rollin' Dreamboat Elvis Presley a potpourri of catcalls and greetings. First off, the Ohio Penitentiary News, representing a captive radio audience, blasted Elvis' recording of White Christmas, "a song beloved until this creature recorded his barnyard version of it." Hastening to concur with the News, Bandleader Sammy Kaye cried that the disk "borders on the sacrilegious. Presley has gone too far this time." Then greetings from the President told Elvis where to go--to a draft board physical exam on Jan. 20 and, if he passes, onward to Fort Chaffee, Ark., as a $78-a-month Army private. Elvis mustered a smile: "Ah'm kinda proud o' it." But at week's end he seemed likely to get an eight-week "hardship" deferment, to be requested by a Hollywood studio that might lose upwards of $300,000 if it cannot soon complete a Presley epic now in the works.

Admiral (ret.) Arthur W. Radford, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and rapidly taking on a full quota of private business posts (director of Philco Corp., Molybdenum Corp. of America, Worthington Corp., consultant to Bankers Trust Co. and Champion Paper & Fibre Co.), paid calls on Japan's Emperor Hirohito and Premier Nobusuke Kishi, departed for Honolulu with the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun--Japan's tribute to a former enemy turned supporter and friend.

Cinemactor-TV Dramaphile Douglas Fairbanks Jr. paid the ultimate penalty for living too many years on the fringe of the Court of St. James's. The Anglophobic Chicago Tribune, possibly by mistake, referred to him (before he made a local speech about the unpopularity of Americans in Europe) as "the tall, suave Britisher." Next day, called on the error by one of its own staffers, the Trib corrected itself: "Fairbanks is an American who has been living in England."

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