Funeral director
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- "Undertaker" and "Mortician" redirect here. For other uses see Undertaker (disambiguation) and Mortician (disambiguation).
A funeral director (also known as a mortician or undertaker) is someone involved in the business of funeral rites. The job often entails the burial or cremation of the dead, as well as the planning and arrangement of the actual funeral ceremony.
In the United Kingdom, a funeral director is someone who directs the funeral, a mortician is someone who works in a mortuary, and an undertaker normally refers in modern times to the person who actually does the carrying (vehicularly or by hand) of the deceased. However, the word "undertaker" in the UK was the name given to members of other professions, e.g. Cabinet makers or carpenters, who had the tools and skills to make coffins or caskets, and who therefore were able to "undertake" funerals as a part of their work. In modern times the term "undertaker" is seen as old-fashioned within the "Funeral Service".
Funeral directors are responsible for meeting with the family of the deceased to make arrangements for the funeral service. The director is also responsible for preparing the deceased for the service by means of embalming, dressing and casketing, and applying cosmetics. However, not all funeral directors are embalmers and vice versa. Many jurisdictions require separate licenses for funeral direction and embalming.
In the UK many Funeral Directors belong to one of three professional organisations, the National Association of Funeral Directors (NAFD), the British Institute of Funeral Directors (BIFD) or the Society of Allied Independent Funeral Directors (SAIF).
The term, "undertaker" could have originated because their job was to get the deceased ready to be buried, or "taken under" the ground.
