'Notorious' once just meant 'well-known' — English alone narrowed it to 'famous for something bad.'
Famous or well known, typically for some bad quality or deed; widely and unfavorably known.
From Medieval Latin nōtōrius (well-known, evident, publicly known), formed from Latin nōtus (known), the past participle of nōscere / gnōscere (to come to know), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵneh₃- (to know). The suffix -tōrius indicates agency or function, so nōtōrius is that which makes known or pertaining to the known. In 16th-century English the word was morally neutral, simply meaning generally or publicly known, as in a notorious fact
In its original Latin and early English usage, 'notorious' simply meant 'widely known' without any negative connotation. A 'notorious fact' was just a well-established one. The word acquired its negative slant in English because things that became widely known tended to be scandals and crimes — good deeds rarely needed to be 'notoriously' known. By the seventeenth century, the negative sense had almost