Saunders
also Sanders, Sandars, Sander
Alexander's son, Cornish and Wessex thick.
- Origin
- South West, England
- Famous bearer
- Dame Cicely Saunders (1918–2005), founder of the modern hospice movement
- Register
- English family
CoreHistoric reach
The seat of Saunders
Seat vacantChief
No one leads the Saunders community yet. When the movement opens, you can stand for its leadership, or help elect whoever does.
Current mission
No shared goal set yet. Once Saunders has leadership, it sets the public focus: a restoration, a gathering, a real-world project that helps its own.
The Saunders clan is being rebuilt. Join the waiting list for the movement today, and you help decide who leads it and what it does.
Help rebuild the Saunders clan →What does the Saunders name mean?
Son of Alexander, Sandres in medieval rolls, compressed to Saunders in the southwest.
The history of Saunders
Alexander the Great's glamour floated over medieval Europe without many actual Alexanders ploughing English fields, yet crusader stories and saints made Alisander fashionable enough that southwestern mums used it. Saunders compresses 'son of Alexander' the way coastal winds shorten sail. Dame Cicely Saunders (1918–2005), the Barnet-born nurse-turned-doctor, founded the modern hospice movement at St Christopher's Hospice in Sydenham in 1967.
Champions of the Saunders name
The bearers whose lives are inseparable from this surname. Each has its own page — biography, achievements, geography, connection to the family.
Step Into History
Walk the streets and seats the Saunders name knew — a photoreal walk through time, on foot.
Notable bearers of the Saunders name
- Dame Cicely Saunders (1918–2005), founder of the modern hospice movement
Stories of Saunders
Frequently asked
What does the surname Saunders mean?
Son of Alexander, Sandres in medieval rolls, compressed to Saunders in the southwest. Alexander the Great's glamour floated over medieval Europe without many actual Alexanders ploughing English fields, yet crusader stories and saints made Alisander fashionable enough that southwestern mums used it.
Where does the Saunders family come from?
The Saunders family is rooted in South West and South East, in England. Within that, the name was particularly concentrated in Cornwall, Devon, Somerset & Bristol and Dorset & Wiltshire. The atlas page for the name records the historical territory it has held over the centuries.
Where did the Saunders family historically hold territory?
At its greatest historical extent, the Saunders name has been concentrated in London, Birmingham & the Black Country, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire & Herefordshire and Shropshire. The atlas page distinguishes the core territory of the name from this wider historical reach with hatched silhouettes on the map.
Is Saunders a England surname?
Yes, Saunders is a England surname. Its editorial home in this atlas is England, where the historical territory and family record of the name are concentrated.
How old is the Saunders surname?
Alexander the Great's glamour floated over medieval Europe without many actual Alexanders ploughing English fields, yet crusader stories and saints made Alisander fashionable enough that southwestern mums used it. European hereditary surnames crystallised broadly between the 12th and 14th centuries, and the Saunders name took its modern form within that long settlement.
What is the Saunders family known for?
Alexander's son, Cornish and Wessex thick. Alexander the Great's glamour floated over medieval Europe without many actual Alexanders ploughing English fields, yet crusader stories and saints made Alisander fashionable enough that southwestern mums used it.
Who is the most famous Saunders?
The best-known bearer of the Saunders name is Dame Cicely Saunders (1918–2005), founder of the modern hospice movement. Their life and connection to the family are profiled in full on the dedicated champion page.
What stories are told about the Saunders family?
The Saunders family is associated with Cicely Saunders and St Christopher's. Each story has its own page on this site with the full account, the date, the location, and the other families involved.
What is the story of Cicely Saunders and St Christopher's?
On the twenty-fourth of July 1967, in the newly built fifty-four-bed hospice complex at 51–59 Lawrie Park Road in Sydenham, south London, Dame Cicely Mary Saunders, forty-nine years old, the Barnet-born nurse (Nightingale School of Nursing 1940–44, displaced from nursing by a back-injury in 1944), almoner-medical-social-worker (London School of Economics 1945–47), and physician (St Thomas's Hospital Medical School 1951–57), opened St Christopher's Hospice as the first modern academic-clinical hospice in the world: an in-patient hospital dedicated to the care of the dying, on the explicit principles of comprehensive symptom-control (pain, breathlessness, nausea, anxiety), psychological-and-spiritual-care of the patient and family, and multidisciplinary clinical-research-and-teaching. The founding-bequest of the hospice was the five-hundred-pound legacy of the Polish-Jewish-refugee patient David Tasma (a Warsaw-Jewish émigré whom Saunders had nursed at the Archway Hospital in 1948 through his terminal cancer at the age of forty, and who had left her his life-savings to be a window in your home). The event is dated to 1967.
Is Sanders the same family as Saunders?
Yes. Sanders is a historical spelling variant of the Saunders name. The two share the same lineage and family affiliation; different parishes, clerks and migration registrars recorded the same name in slightly different forms, and the variant spellings sit on the same family tree.
Is Sandars the same family as Saunders?
Yes. Sandars is a historical spelling variant of the Saunders name. The two share the same lineage and family affiliation; different parishes, clerks and migration registrars recorded the same name in slightly different forms, and the variant spellings sit on the same family tree.
Is Sander the same family as Saunders?
Yes. Sander is a historical spelling variant of the Saunders name. The two share the same lineage and family affiliation; different parishes, clerks and migration registrars recorded the same name in slightly different forms, and the variant spellings sit on the same family tree.
Where is the Saunders surname found today?
England is the primary historical home of the Saunders surname. In the modern era, the name is also borne across the wider diaspora, particularly in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, where families carry the line of descent from the same England origin recorded on this page.
What does the Clan Rising page for the Saunders family cover?
The Clan Rising page for the Saunders family covers the meaning of the surname, the historical geography of the name, famous bearers of the name, traditional stories and the seat of the head of the family. Each section is linked to the underlying atlas of England so the name can be read in the geography that shaped it.
Who is the head of the Saunders family today?
The seat for the head of the Saunders family is currently vacant on this register. Clan Rising is rebuilding the chief and family structure for the modern era, and the family page allows readers to claim the seat or pledge to the name.