She wasn't even born yet when Mr. Hillary climbed Mount Everest.....she has been lying her entire life...almost like its a sickness....something she can't help....
I think perhaps you meant to say the opposite. ANYBODY named after another person would by definition not be born yet when their namesake became famous.
Hillary Rodham was born in 1947; Edmund Hillary made his climb of Everest in May of 1953 when Hillary Rodham was five years old. She didn't "claim" to have been named after Edmund Hillary; she simply related an anecdote her
mother had told her, to Edmund Hillary himself, probably as a personal tribute to his accomplishments. An anecdote that doesn't sound factual but is typical of stories a parent tells to a five-year-old to build their confidence in the same ballpark as stories about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.
Go ahead, check me.
Simply relating a story
one's mother told one, as a humourous quip to the character involved in that story, is in no way the same as
claiming it for oneself. Anyone can see that 1947 came before 1953. So there is a "sickness" of lying" here but when it involves putting words in the mouths of others that they never claimed, it's a sickness of the word-putters, not the puttees.
Much the same as Elizabeth Warren's Cherokee/Lenape heritage.
That aside, without seeing the context of the material it would seem people still living don't belong in "history" books. Helen Keller is a whole 'nother ball game and I can see why they'd want to excise her. Helen Keller was a political activist, anti-racist, leftist whose image has been whitewashed over the years to a vastly distorted degree. They probably don't want her name brought up lest the truth of her bio get "discovered".
