Sandi L Boucher (Red Thunderbolt, Loon clan; Seine River First Nation) reflects on her personal name history: born Sandra (pronounced by her mother as Sandra), adopted the nickname Sandy (with Y) in high school, and later had a partner begin spelling it 'Sandi' (with I). That renaming—ritualized in love notes—now troubles her because social-media verification requires matching ID (Sandra). She is debating whether to revert publicly to her birth name to both honor her mother and enable verification, or continue using the preferred nickname that some close friends still use. The video explains her emotional reaction (including links to past domestic-abuse history and feelings about colonial renaming) and solicits viewers' opinions.
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Okay, first off, I'm going to apologize for my microphone. Trust me. After I did the replay on yesterday's video, I ordered a new one. This is just happening a little too often, so I apologize and hopefully this video is nice and clear. Now, yesterday I said I had something different for you today, something I want your opinion on. Indigenous or non, specifically women. I mean, the men can offer their opinion too, but I think this is going to. It's really going to hit a different for women. I realized something recently. I'm just not sure what I want to do about it. So let's talk about it. Bonjour. Hi everybody. My name is Sandy Boucher. I'm Red Thunderbolt, woman of the Loon clan, a proud member of Seine river first nation in Treaty 3 territory in Northern Ontario. And today, as crazy as it sounds, we need to talk about my name. So what brought this up? Maybe you don't know this. Creators definitely know this. I think pretty much anyone that uses social media has probably run into this. But I might be wrong. Lately you have been able to verify your profile on a variety of different platforms. So what that requires is you have your username, your name on these platforms and you go through whatever their process is, but it always requires you taking a picture of your valid id. And this is not like this is totally legit. No one start panicking about people stealing your id. That's not what this is about. But you have to prove that your name, your username, is actually who you are. Once you do that, you get verified and then people can trust that you are who you are. So that's all well and good, except I can't do that because my name is Sandra. And in fact, the way my mom pronounced it when she named me, and for my entire life with my mom, it was Sandra. And when I was in high school, I guess now Sandra I like. I mean, it's my mom that always resonated with me and that gives me warm, happy feels. But Sandra, now to all the Sandras out there, please don't take offense. This was just my personal opinion. Sandra always sounded too snotty to me. It sounded too uppity. I was raised blue collar, a small northern Ontario town. The street I lived on was literally gravel. Like, I mean, right? That, that humble upbringing. And yes, on the main street of our town had the yellow line down the middle of it because it happened to be the highway. So Sandra just didn't. I didn't feel like a Sandra. So in high school I started going by Sandy. Now My teacher still called me Sandra. People that were casual acquaintances called me Sandra because up until then I had been Sandra everywhere. In school, out on the playground, wherever. But with my close friends it was Sandy. Sandy with Y S, A N D Y. So I was Sandy for years and years and years, went into adulthood, got married, got divorced, got married, got divorced, was still Sandy. And then. And I've talked about my husband's before, that's totally a different video. No judgment. And when I met my third husband. Now I have to say, looking back, have you ever looked back at something in your life and you're like, I can't believe that happened. Or even more, I can't believe I let that happen. So I had just started dating the person who would become my husband. And you know, you're. It's that honeymoon phase and everything's beautiful and wonderful and he's absolutely perfect and you know what I mean? Anyways, he used to write me notes, write me letters, like literally handwrite or type it out on the computer and print it for me to find. Just a little like often they were, you're sleeping soundly in the other room and I was thinking about you. Those kind of super, super sweet letters and emails and. Well, they weren't emails. He never emailed it to me. He would leave it for me to find it. But in those letters, one of the very first ones, I don't know when it happened, but at some point he explained in one of those letters how he didn't. He would spell my name with an I, San D I. And he explained in the letter that Sandy with the Y didn't suit me, that he thought it should be with an I. So from now on that's how he was spelling it. Modern day Sandy. Looking back on that, it's like, what? What? So you just thought you could rename me? And as an indigenous woman, you didn't think that would be problematic? He was the pretendian, if you watch my previous videos. So that was definitely the colonial side of him. Well, which was all his sites because he was just pretending to be indigenous. But the renaming and of course at the time I was like, oh my God, it's so sweet. It's like a pen name. And then my brother at the time was with his wife and her name is Sandy. She spelled it with a Y. So then it became a running joke. You're Sandy with the Y, I'm Sandy with an I, blah, blah, blah. And on and on it goes. Until recently when I'm looking at verifying my social media contacts and I can't because my ID is in Sandra as it should be. That's the name on my birth certificate. And then I remembered how I became Sandy. And truth be told, I will always be Sandy to my closest friends. But I am seriously debating and considering going back to Sandra on all my accounts and, and probably changing my name here on this channel and on my other social media channels. And you can bet that I would pronounce it so Sandra. And instead of honoring the ex husband who decided to rename me, I'll back go back to honoring the woman that meant everything to me. Probably for the very first time. Not hating the name she gave me, but carrying it with pride. So how's that for funky? How's that for like wtf? Like how did this even happen? So what do you think? Like if this was you, like like feel free, rant on if you need to or offer sage advice or whatever the case may be. I don't know what I'm gonna do. But I know that the confident, proud, self determined me that I am now, there's a part of me that resents that he wanted to rename me, that he did rename me. There's a part of me that's sad that I was the woman that let him and, and it wasn't just because of the honeymoon stage. I want to be crystal clear here. I am a 10 year domestic abuse survivor. There was a lot of years in my life where I wasn't assertive, I wasn't confident, I was very subservient and I wouldn't have fought back, that I wouldn't have said anything. I wanted to keep my last name when we got married or hyphenated and he absolutely refused so I changed my last name. I changed it back. Boucher is my maiden name. But what do you think? So, so do I keep running with Sandy? Do I change it? What's your thoughts? I value your opinion. We've been on this journey together for a while and even if you're new here, I believe everything happen for a reason. If you've seen this video and you have an opinion, please share it because I'd love to hear it. I've been pondering this for at least a couple weeks now and I. I would like to make some kind of decision. Even if the decision is to do nothing. For the sake of my followers, I would love to verify my account so they know I'm legit. Because nowadays online can be really scary and I'm not really sure how I feel about going by the name that my ex partner, my ex incredibly unfaithful pretending partner felt the need to give me. So in the comments below I will link the video where I talked about my ex husband so you can hear the story of him. But I would love to hear your thoughts. That's what I'm going into the weekend with. How you doing? I hope you have a super duper double delicious weekend and I will see you again on Monday. I love you. Take care. Dying to hear what you think. I love you. Bye bye.
