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

In tiny (pop. 550) Tioga, Texas, early in the month, Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, 74, became a formal church member for the first time when he joined Lone Star Primitive Baptist Church.* The conversion took place in a white frame church, after a Sunday sermon, when Elder Henry Greer Ball, a grocer on weekdays, asked if anyone present would like to accept Jesus Christ. Up stepped Sam, taking off tie, jacket and shoes. Then, wearing socks, trousers and white shirt, the Speaker of the House was completely immersed for a moment in a portable baptistry before he emerged dripping to hear himself baptized "in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost," and to hear the congregation of about 40 break into song:

"How sweet the name of Jesus sounds

In a believer's ear.

It soothes his sorrows, heals his wounds,

And drives away his fear."

Pretty blonde Dolly Pullman Astor, 28, who was a $65-a-week receptionist before she married multimillionaire John Jacob Astor III and ditched him six weeks later, had her maintenance raised by the Florida Supreme Court from $75 to $250 a week.

Time was when a singer was expected to do no more than sing. But today a popular singer is apt to put on an elaborate production that calls for scriptwriters, stage director, musical director, arranger, piano accompanist, set designer and dress designers. Last week in her one-woman show in the Persian Room of Manhattan's staid old Plaza Hotel, Songbird Lisa Kirk used all of this paraphernalia to display as much of her shapely figure as the law allows. But between her entrance and exit in scanties, she did manage to sing.

Back to the charms of grey Paris after a summer at gay Saint-Tropez, where she nursed her suntan on a hot beach all day and danced the cha cha cha all night, French Novelist Franchise (Bonjour Tristesse) Sagan was enjoying the gift of independence she recently offered herself on her 21st birthday: a new dark blue, green and white apartment on the Left Bank, in place of the bourgeois restrictions of her sedate family home. On warm days when Franc,oise is not dashing about in her Studebaker, Buick, Jaguar (bought with her first royalty check) or Gordini racer ("It is nice to touch it with your hand"), she can cool off with the gift of an American admirer: an electric hand fan decorated with diamonds and mink.

After delivering a dedication address at the New Jersey Turnpike's Holland Tunnel-Newark extension, New Jersey's bachelor Governor Robert B. Meyner, 48, was asked, "Does this road lead to matrimony?" With his pretty guest, Helen Stevenson, a distant cousin of Adlai E. Stevenson, standing a few feet away, Meyner gazed down the broad $120 million turnpike extension and murmured, "I don't see any signs."

Admitting that they disagree on a name for the baby they expect in February--but agree on everything else--Her Serene Highness Princess Grace of Monaco and Prince Rainier arrived in Manhattan for a two-month visit to the U.S. Eying the princess, a reporter asked who would get the succession if February brought twins. Replied the prince: the first to be born, regardless of sex. At week's end in Ocean City, N.J., where Grace's folks have a summer place, the weather was windy, but a select wardrobe of maternity outfits helped keep the heir-conditioned princess warm.

Wearing special dark glasses after eye surgery to correct a detached retina suffered during a demonstration at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Old Democrat James A. Farley left a Manhattan hospital, grinning and waving a straw hat.

The royal palace in Bangkok announced that Thailand's youthful (28) King Phumiphon Adundet, sometime composer of popular songs (TIME, Aug. 25, 1952), will be ordained as a Buddhist priest next month. For the 15 days he will keep his orders, the King will live in Bowaranives Monastery, which has never, according to tradition, been violated by any female presence, human or animal. He will spend his mornings walking the streets barefoot, begging for food.

When Marlene Dietrich, working in Rome in the movie The Monte Carlo Story, was told that Zsa Zsa Gabor had opened in Las Vegas in a gown that allegedly bared even more than Marlene's own daring Las Vegas gown of two years before, Marlene purred: "Well, if it's quantity they want and not quality . . ." Zsa Zsa purred back: "I always was a great admirer of Marlene's, but so was my mother and so was my father."

* Its congregation consists of the fundamentalist "Hard Shell" Baptists. They are not directly connected with the largest Baptist group, the Southern Baptist Convention.

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