Orson Scott Card: Hello, my name is Orson Scott Card. My parents never planned to call me Orson. The name I was going to go by was Scott, but they put the name Orson on the front, because the initial Scott Orson Card would be S. O. C. They were afraid I'd get a horrible nickname like Soco. They changed the order of the name and put Orson in front, which was the bane of my existence when I was in grade school. I wasn't named for Orson Wells. I wasn't named for Orson Bean or any of the other famous Orsons. I was named for my grandfather, Orson Riga Card. Since Riga was his other name, I'm so glad they chose Orson. At least it's a name people have heard of that isn't a city in Lithuania or Latvia or wherever it is.

The name Orson is not, as you might think, a Scandinavian name. In fact, in Mormon culture, which is where I come from, the name Orson was quite a prominent name. There were several early leaders of the church whose name was Orson. The name Orson comes from the same Indo-European root as the word for bear in Latin, ursa. My name means bear. Of course, Scott is part of my Celtic heritage. Card, nobody knows where that name comes from.