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

The Navy let it be known that Richard Milhous Nixon, Lieutenant Commander, U.S.N.R., had been denied promotion to the rank of commander because of insufficient attention to naval homework. The Vice President acknowledged the dereliction and did not even plead that the distraction of official duties had interfered with his best intentions. Later in the week the distraction point was made when Republican Representative Albert P. Morano, writing on behalf of Connecticut's hatmakers, complained that Nixon is too often bareheaded in public appearances. Morano offered to furnish a selection of hats, and asked Nixon at least to hold hat in hand when being photographed--"to destroy a sartorial virus known as 'hatlessness.' "

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Rome gossiped that Belgium's King Baudouin was making royal eyes from a respectable distance at much-rushed post-debutante Princess Alessandra Victoria Torlonia, 18-year-old granddaughter of Spain's late King Alfonso XIII. The princess meanwhile managed to look only elfin and quizzical as she stepped along with her social calendar.

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Not long after he bumped into a French black-marketeer on a Paris street corner, Sugar Ray Robinson, sometime world middleweight champion, was visited by the police, who searched his apartment and found 250,000 hot francs. After Sugar Ray meekly acknowledged that he had swapped the francs for $700 U.S. at slightly better than the official rate, the gendarmes sorrowfully told him it was a bad bargain, confiscated the francs because they were counterfeit. They had only sympathy for Sugar Ray himself. "He tells us he likes Paris," said a police spokesman, "and we like him too."

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In Seattle, Jack Benny, a full-time working comedian and sometimes-Democrat, showed up at a $10-a-plate luncheon in honor of Adlai Stevenson, a part-time comedian and full-time Democrat. Ad-libbed Stevenson: "I don't believe Mr. Benny could have paid his way in today, because there wasn't time for him to get word from his lawyer as to whether the money would be deductible." Later, Benny visited Stevenson to ask for an autographed photo for his wife Mary Livingstone. Said penny-(and audience)-wise Benny: "I don't know enough about this politics to be able to say whether one guy or another should've made it. I just know that when I meet a guy I like, I like him. Nothing political about it."

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Fitted out in ancient and modern Turkish fashion, Mrs. Herbert Brownell Jr., wearing an up-to-date evening gown, and Ivy Baker Priest, Treasurer of the U.S., in an early-day harem gown lent by the Istanbul Museum, served as models in a Washington fashion show arranged as a benefit for the costume collection of the Smithsonian Institution.

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Noting that "it's summer and it's hot," the New York Post's Owner-Publisher-Columnist Dorothy Schiff decided to turn loose her womanly scorn on Dr. Alfred Kinsey. "I have met Dr. Kinsey just once, at a dinner where he was a paid speaker," she wrote. "He turned out to be an unamiable man carrying a chip on his shoulder. I didn't read much of his first book, but I did read all of the last one, pseudo-scientifically entitled Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. I found it interesting--if true. But I doubt whether a poll of a few thousand American women willing to talk to one of Dr. Kinsey's investigators justified the all-embracing title . . . Dr. Kinsey's moral, or immoral, judgments I found inexcusable in a purportedly factual and scientific study."

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Shrugging off the pain of a broken rib, Author Somerset Maugham slipped into his morning coat, clapped on his topper and made his way to Buckingham Palace, there received from Queen Elizabeth his investiture as Companion of Honor.

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Back in Moscow, apparently for further treatment for his ailing circulatory system, was France's No. 1 Communist, Maurice Thorez, who returned from Russia only 15 months ago after 2 1/2 years of treatment. Taking over the French Red reins during Thorez's absence: No. 2 man Jacques Duclos.

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The Columbia (S.C.) State published the latest poetical work of Mrs. John E. Peurifoy, 42, wife of the U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala: "Sing a song of quetzals*/ Pockets full of peace!/ The junta's in the palace--/ They've taken out a lease./ The Commies are in hiding/ Just across the street;/ To the embassy of Mexico/ They beat a quick retreat./ And pistol-packing Peurifoy/ Looks mighty optimistic--/ For the land of Guatemala/ Is no longer Communistic!"

* A quetzal is both the Guatemalan national bird and unit of currency ($1).

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