I once heard a story that went something like this...
Once upon a time, several thousand years ago, there lived a tribe of hunter-gatherers who subsisted on nuts, berries, insects, and occasional prairie dogs that they could catch.  As the size of their tribe increased, they had a difficult time finding enough food.  They were almost always hungry and their young ones were thin and small.  Ironically, all around them were countless buffalo (probably bison, but we don’t have all the details) grazing in herds and pretty much ignoring the tribe.  The hunters in the tribe sharpened long poles to use as spears and tried to stab the buffalo to kill some of them and use them for the meat.  But the buffalo ran away before the hunters could get close enough.  Indeed some hunters were gored and trampled in their attempts to kill the buffalo.

Last year I wrote an essay for the website of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Brandeis University.  You might fine it of interest.

Louis Brandeis was born in 1856 and died in 1941, about two months before the attack on Pearl Harbor and the beginning of the United States’ active involvement in World War II.  Seven years later, in 1948, after the end of the war, Brandeis University was founded.  Why did they choose his name?  Most everyone knows that he became the first Jewish justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, but why use his name?  Here is my personal explanation for why choosing that name was such a good decision.