The author was born, to German parents, in Yugoslavia in 1931 and was christened "Siegfried," a name from ancient Germanic mythology. After World War II, the surviving members of his family escaped the persecution of Yugoslavian Germans for Salzburg, in Austria. He used "Siegfried" until he immigrated in 1956 to the United States, where the name was quite unfamiliar, at which point he shortened it to "Fried" and, eventually, anglicized it to "Fred," which everybody who knows him calls him--though he remains "Dad" and "Grandpa" to his kids and grandkids, and "Friedl" to his wife.