I knew Yuri's first name but couldn't recall his second, and I knew what a Souyez was from seeing the film Gravity but I couldn't figure out how to spell it.
From looking up articles where it is actually used it seems to be the English language term coined to refer to Chinese astronauts. Its obscurity could just mean there have not been enough Chinese sent up to space yet.
When I was growing up in the '60s Von Braun's name was always in the news and he was interviewed often on TV. I don't remember hearing about Goddard as much back then - I think he worked more in the background.
I think it was more because Goddard "laid the foundations" a generation earlier. His work started in the 1920's, years before rocketry enjoyed significant interest in the US, and lasted through to the early 1940's. He died on August 10, 1945 - four days after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
The first person to orbit the Earth is certainly a milestone. The first person from the USA (or any particular country) to orbit the Earth is useless chauvinism. There are plenty of other interesting trivia that could be included instead.
So you're saying that if the Soviets had dropped a man on the moon the year after the USA did, that no one would care about him or his name? It's perfectly legitimate to ask the first American to orbit as these were the only two space powers at the time. Not to mention that a lot more people get the Glenn answer than von Braun.
Yeah, a few months before Space Camp was released - a family movie about kids getting accidentally launched into space on one of those shuttles and trying to get home alive. Famously a marketing nightmare.