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

In Paris, Andre Franc,ois-Poncet, 65, prewar French Ambassador in Berlin and Rome and now High Commissioner to West Germany, faced one of the toughest diplomatic chores of his career. As a newly elected member of the French Academy, he had the traditional duty of eulogizing the man to whose seat he had been elevated: the late Marshal Henri Philippe Petain. He spent four months polishing his speech. The result left his fellow academicians, used to nimble-tongued exhibitions, applauding with admiration. Sample pirouette: "Some of the pages which Marshal Petain wrote in the book of history are luminous, but other remarkable pages give rise to conflicting interpretations and vigorous passions. We must commemorate the first, but we cannot ignore the second."

Back with his Princess to the scene of the Battle of Waterloo came Prince Napoleon, 39, great-grandnephew of the Little Corporal, to visit Bonaparte's old farmhouse headquarters. They brought with them a gift for the Belgian Society of Napoleonic Studies: a pennon of the Imperial Guard, carried from the battlefield 138 years ago.

At Amalienborg, the royal residence in Copenhagen, King Frederik said farewell to Eugenie Anderson of Red Wing, Minn., popular retiring U.S. Ambassador to Denmark, and presented her with the Grand Cross of the Order of Dannebrog.

On a short holiday in Garmisch, Germany, NATO Commander General Matthew B. Ridgway, with his wife Penny and four-year-old son Matt Jr., watched the world championship bobsled races. To get into the spirit of the occasion, the general borrowed a pair of skis, got a few pointers from the nearest experts, and took off. Result: a beginner's traditional pratfall picture by an alert photographer.

For his coronation trip and six-month visit to Europe and America, Crown Prince Akihito was voted by the Finance Ministry in Tokyo an expense account of $305,555.56.

Cinemactress Rita Hayworth finally arrived in Reno to divorce Aly Khan. Meanwhile, gambling 100,000-franc chips in Monte Carlo, with Cinemactress Gene Tierney at his side for luck and relaxation, Aly shrugged off comment. Said he: "I don't know anything about it. Nobody tells me anything ..."

In Providence, R.I., a testimonial dinner for the senior Senator of the U.S., Theodore Francis Green, was suddenly canceled by his office. Reason: the Senator, now 85, felt that the event might be construed as a sign that he would retire when his present term expires in 1954.

In Manhattan, Mrs. Margaret W. Patterson, widow of Robert P. Patterson, former Secretary of War who met his death in a plane crash in Elizabeth, N.J. a year ago, filed suit against American Airlines for $2,685,000, one of the largest individual damage claims ever filed against an airline.

Lord Baden-Powell, 39, whose father founded the Boy Scout movement, was promoted to the rank of police sergeant in the London special constabulary.

Baker Street irregulars in Manhattan heard alarming news from London. The Sadlers Wells Company was presenting Sherlock Holmes in tights, with Dr. Watson dancing by his side to help thwart evil Professor Moriarty, in a ballet called The Great Detective. Such goings-on, rumbled the New York Herald Tribune in an editorial, are "nothing less than revolting . . . enough to outrage one's Victorian soul . . . We recall the prescient words of Sherlock Holmes himself: 'There is but one step from the grotesque to the horrible.' "

Dr. Peter Lindstrom, ex-husband of Actress Ingrid Bergman and now a resident of Pittsburgh, once again made news of sorts. At a benefit ball for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, he teamed with Mrs. Kenneth Johnstone, the wife of a friend, to win the Viennese waltz contest. Result: a picture of a heavily robed, crowned and painfully self-conscious dance king.

After singing in the drafty National Guard Armory during the inaugural ball, Lily Pons, who already had a slight cold went to bed with a case of bronchial pneumonia.

In London, Sir Laurence Olivier announced his next project: to produce, direct and star in a Technicolor movie version of Shakespeare's King Lear.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill, on his way home from a vacation in Jamaica, agreed to appear briefly in a French movie about Clemenceau. One of the Churchillian lines describing the Old Tiger: "In the prodigious way in which a man can embody his country, he has been France."

Author Somerset Maugham, who once said that the public respects an old writer for his age and not necessarily for his work went to the Riviera villa of his friend the Aga Khan to celebrate his 79th birthday. For the occasion, he had a further observation: "The public gets used to a writer . . . Longevity also allows a writer, if he's old enough, to influence three generations of readers. But it isn't having written a lot that makes one respected. What makes a writer and what makes him a success is, in my opinion, solely his personality. Whether it's good or bad, it's necessary to have a personality. Every day I get letters from people I don't know. Some find my personality odious, others like it very much."

Playwright William Saroyan replied to a letter in the New York Times attacking his "egotistical behavior." His stand: "It is often difficult if not impossible for natural behavior not to seem egotistical; furthermore, it is not imperative for a writer to be careful not to seem egotistical to some people."

In Washington for the inauguration, Columnist Westbrook Pegler shook hands with a man he thought was an admirer, found he had accepted a summons from a process server: a $5,100,000 assault-libel-conspiracy suit filed by Fellow Columnist Drew Pearson.

In London, Welsh Poet Dylan Thomas received the annual William Foyle Poetry Prize for the best volume published during the year--his Collected Poems, 1934-1952, which has sold some 7,000 copies to date and is still going at the rate of 300 a week. The commercial reaction: "Phenomenal for a contemporary poet."

The American book publishing industry announced its honor list, the National Book Awards. Fiction: Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man); nonfiction: Bernard DeVoto (The Course of Empire); poetry: Archibald MacLeish (Collected Poems, 1917-1952).

In Manhattan, the National Institute of Arts and Letters elected Playwright Marc (Green Pastures) Connelly as its new president, to succeed Composer Douglas Moore.

Lee Ellison, a 15-year-old Alexandria, Va. high-school girl, was puzzled to find that in some textbook versions of the poem Sea Fever ("I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky"), the word "go" was omitted. She sent her problem to the author and back came a hand-written note from John Masefield, Poet Laureate of England since 1930, who wrote: "The word 'go' should be in the line. In some editions it dropped out somehow, but is now restored. It is the original reading."

Author Erskine Caldwell flew from Tucson, Ariz. to help defend eight theater people arrested in Vancouver, B.C. and charged with staging an obscene performance. The performance: Caldwell's Tobacco Road. Said the author: "I have [seen] Tobacco Road at least once a year for the past 20 years . . . There is nothing obscene ; it may be that the play is too close to the people and upset them."

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