Funeral Coach or Hearse?

I always have refered to myself as a Mortician. Telling folks that I am a Funeral Director and Embalmer is a bit of a mouthful, and mortician encompasses both of those terms rather well. Besides the word Mortuary is in the name of our establishment.

There is a mortuary college in the my city that 90% of my collegues attended and they all say Funeral Coach. I however call it a Hearse because people know what that is, as opposed to looking about for some guy wearing a stipped shirt and whistle...

In my area I have always heard the term funeral director, never undertaker or mortician.
As for hearse or funeral coach, I hear it both ways about the same ammount, i even switch back and forth,but my car show signs have it as funeral coach. It just sounds better.

Many people around here, myself included, still refer to me as an undertaker. That's kind of how I started out and its ok with me.....just a country undertaker. It could be worse, I could be a CPA. I am told they become CPA's because they lack the charisma to be undertakers.

I really don't see anything harsh or undignified about the term "hearse". My current avitar is a photo of my Great Grandfather on a horse-drawn hearse taken in 1919 in Blue Earth, MN.

Such an interesting conversation!

Before reading through the whole post, my first thought was that a coach reminded me of the old horse drawn coaches because of the coach work that went into them. Hearse would refer to anything that did not contain "coach" work or wood work for the body. My original thought would be that any full metal bodied funeral car would be considered a hearse and any wood bodied motorized or horse drawn funeral vehicle would be a coach. Just my original thoughts... Not sure now after reading all the posts.

As for the person that organizes the funeral... Funeral Director seems to be the standard around here. I do agree that mortician would still be acceptable because most of the schools still teach mortuary science... example... PIMS... Pittsburgh Institute of Mortuary Science. Unfortunately, it seems to me that the layman on the street would not always know what a mortician was, but most know what a funeral director is.