Jean Mendoza: My birth name is Jean Anne Paine. It's a rather plain sounding name with a lot of nnn-sounds that used to bother me.

We had family friends whose last name was Hurt, and our parents used to joke that some of us kids should become doctors and go into practice together -- Dr. Paine and Dr. Hurt, you know?

Paine is an English name but much of my ancestry is German and Swiss, and I took classes to learn to speak German. When I married at Durango Mendoza I took his last name even though a lot of couples don't do that anymore.

Durango's mother was Native American, a citizen of the Muskogee Creek Nation, and his father was Mexican American. They got divorced before Durango was born so Durango never learned Spanish and neither have I. But I'm glad to be Jean Mendoza now.