Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Why I'm Not Jenn Kaucher
It's starting to crank me up a bit how people (some who know me well) refer to me as Jenn Kaucher. That's not my name. My name is Jennifer Hill-Kaucher. You can truncate my first name all you want - J. Hill-Kaucher, Jenn Hill-Kaucher, Jenny Hill-Kaucher, Je Hill-Kaucher, you get the picture. Don't take off the Hill. Hill is the birth name that was passed to me from my parents. I plan on doing good work in the world and giving them credit. When you take off the most important part of my name, it's like getting a doll with no head. Please don't be lazy and edit out the part of my name that matters most.
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10 comments:
ouch
I've never heard you call me Jenn Kaucher.
But I am sure I have probably written it on something I addressed to you. Or I've missed the hyphen. Or written "Jenn & Helen Kaucher" which is probably just as offensive. I will try to be more careful in the future.
Me, too.......slinking away......
But before I slink, I had a thought about names recently, I know a couple of women who took their mother's last name, wanting to attach themselves to the female branch of the family. But there are no real women's surnames. My friends' mothers' names were actually their mothers' fathers' names. And if they go back a generation, they'll find their grandmother's father's name. And so on. It's all so obvious when you view a family tree, as I've been doing.
Which is not to say I don't understand your desire to hold on to Hill. I understand completely. I love Luckstone.
You're no relation to Kim Hill Smith, are you?
Great to come back (after a lull on my part) to so many yummy entries.
No slinking away please. Really, I regret ever having posted this. Man, I hardly ever rant - and maybe this is why. I worry about hurting people.
I could (and probably should for confusion's sake) just drop the Kaucher altogether, but it's a link to my daughter, and it's on all of my books. And there's the added annoyance of people combining Jennifer and Hill and turning my first name into Jill.
Susan: I suppose a woman could make her own surname by making a completely new one for herself and changing it legally. That would really confound the geneologist!
Kris: Helen's last name is Kaucher, so that doesn't matter. If you addressed a package to "Helen and Jennifer Kaucher" that would be different. I don't care about the hyphen. It's the lack of Hill that bugs me.
IB: I have no idea who Kim Hill Smith is. There are a lot of Hills in the world! Some of German descent and others of English. Is Kim a poet?
Kim Hill Smith is a psychotherapist in Edina, MN. (And I have that on strict Google authority.)
Jennifer Hill is a porn star. I have that on Google authority too. :-)
Kim Hill Smith is a psychotherapist in Minneapolis, last I heard, but maybe also in a suburb. Or maybe she's moved and hasn't told me. We've lost touch (but I 365ed her). She was born Kim Hill in Lewistown, PA, or thereabouts...
Susan: I have another friend in PA who was having that patriarchal-naming issue. She took her first name, Patty, and made it her last name, Patt. She took her parents' last names, Yoder and Hollinger, and changed that to her first name, yh. And never looked back.
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