Words & WritingGreek → English
Patronymic
/ˌpatrəˈnɪmɪk/noun
A name derived from that of a father or male ancestor, such as Ivanovich or Johnson.
The Greek roots
πατήρ
patḗr
father
ὄνυμα
ónyma
name
Literally: “father-name”
The story of the word
Homer runs on patronymics: Achilles is Peleides, son of Peleus, and the epithet does real metrical work. Russian keeps the system alive as a required middle name, and Iceland never adopted family names at all, so Jón's daughter is Jónsdóttir and the phone book is alphabetised by first name. A large share of English surnames are frozen patronymics that stopped updating around the fourteenth century.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → French → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
Same family
patriarchpaternalsynonymanonymousmatronymic
In a sentence
Address him by first name and patronymic if you want to sound respectful.
Half the class shared a surname that was once a patronymic.