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

Got up for the ritual in the traditional robes, white-thatched New England Poet Robert Frost, 82, will be given honorary degrees next month by both Cambridge and Oxford--one of the few Americans to be so honored in recent times. Other Americans to receive the same double distinction: Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1868 and Poet-Diplomat James Russell Lowell in 1873. Said Poet Frost: "I guess you could say this caps my career. After all, I've written only one book--one book of about 600 pages. That's about ten pages a year over a 60-year period."

In Los Angeles, Peruvian Songbird Yma Sumac, 35, exercising all the resources of her four-octave voice, starred in a choice bit of opera bouffe in three acts. Featured opposite her: her estranged husband, Moises Vivanco, 38, with a supporting cast of two Inca folk dancers, one confused harp player, three private eyes, one happy collie, a carload of cops. It began in January when Yma's husband lost a paternity suit brought by Yma's former secretary, and was declared the father of the secretary's twin girls. Yma sued for divorce. The action of Act II was not so clear, but Husband Vivanco feelingly declared that one day last week a couple of private detectives came to the $60,000 love nest, where Yma no longer lives, roughed him up and threatened to shoot him. Next day photographers and reporters were on hand when mink-coated Yma and three private eyes turned up looking for her orchid-and-white Cadillac convertible and a few other trifles. Yma sang a raucous duet in Spanish and English with one of Vivanco's folk dancers, concluding it abruptly with a backhanded slap across the girl's face. Soon, with flashbulbs flaring, a free-for-all, catch-as-catch-can battle was on, characterized by head-bumping, clothes-ripping, hair-pulling and name-calling, with the entire cast pitching in until the cops arrived. Yma's dark glasses fell off in the struggle, disclosing a black eye that had been presented earlier by her husband as a token of his esteem. Wailed Vivanco in court at week's end: "I and the members of my household are in fear of our lives."

Out of the carefree '20s came Gene Austin, asweet-voiced tenor whose story was evocatively told last week on NBC-TV's Goodyear Playhouse. Millions of televiewers had never heard of him, but other millions (over 40) had grown up and fallen in and out of love listening to him sing on records or radio. After thumping a piano in brothels around the country, then touring in vaudeville, Gene began recording, and chiefly between 1924 and 1930 sold 86 million records. Barrel-shaped but still velvet-throated at 56, Tenor Austin, singing the sound track, brought back the nostalgic old daze as he crooned some of the songs he made famous: My Blue Heaven, Melancholy Baby, Ain't She Sweet, How Come You Do Me Like You Do, Yes Sir, That's My Baby.

Arriving in Manhattan to dance the title role in NBC-TV's go-minute spectacular, Cinderella, Dame Margot Fonteyn, prima ballerina of the Royal Ballet (formerly Sadler's Wells), announced that on TV "you have to keep your mind skinned" because TV cameras are all over (and a stage audience is just out front). Though Dancer Fonteyn likes to perform on TV, she does not like to look at it: "Wastes too much time. It's paralyzing."

Sailing for Europe, Novelist John (The Short Reign of Pippin IV) Steinbeck did not yet know the happy news: the state of Oklahoma, which fussed and fumed at his portrait in The Grapes of Wrath of poverty-stricken Okies fleeing their drought-struck land, had at last forgiven him. After Steinbeck told an ABC-TV interviewer that "I've spoken against dust and I've spoken against poverty, but never against Oklahoma," Oklahoma's Governor Raymond Gary named him a member of the Governor's Staff of Oklahoma Boosters.

Having met at the Olympic games in Australia and married despite mountains of red tape in Red-ruled Czechoslovakia, Champion Hammer Thrower Harold Connolly, 25, the pride of Boston, and his bride, Champion Discus Thrower Olga Filcotova, 24, the pride of Prague, sailed happily into New York harbor, down to "our last 35-c-." Exclaiming on the beauties of Fifth Avenue's shop windows, Olga was quickly reassured by her mother-in-law: "This is nothing. Wait until you see Boston, the seat of all culture."

On her way to Europe aboard the S.S. United States, Elsa Maxwell made overtures of peace toward the Duchess of Windsor, with whom she has been feuding for the past three years. Said Elsa at this moment in history: "I once wrote the duchess that we were both strong personalities, and almost a law unto ourselves." Meeting history and the inner law, Elsa sent a conciliatory note to the duchess. The duchess responded by inviting Elsa to cocktails in her shipboard suite. Said Elsa, "She was charming; she can be very charming. The duke is always charming."

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