Scott Russell Sanders: Hello. My name is Scott Russell Sanders. So first name Scott. It originally started, we were told, as shorthand for someone from Scotland, and it was a last name rather than a first name. So that's a pretty simple source for Scott. And my last name, Sanders is a common name in Scotland, and far back in time, it derived from a word that meant the son of Alexander. If you want to remember how to say it, it's like a sander that you might use to smooth a piece of furniture and sand is pronounced just like the sand on a beach. My middle name is Russell and that has special significance for me because it was the name of one of my father's brothers.

That brother of my father died when he was a young man, actually, in a train accident when he was on his way to see my father. And that was long before I was born. He was one of 11 children along with my father and my father's closest friend among his brothers and sisters was Russell. So all his life, my father regretted having lost his brother in that train accident, and he gave me the name, Russell. And one last word. I lived for four years in England when I was studying in graduate school. And in England, people don't say the name Sanders. No matter how it's spelled, they always pronounce it Saunders, as if it were laundry. But in America we have that flat little a, which you hear when I say my last name, Sanders.