Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The name of someone's mother.
  • noun A matronymic surname.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From mater "mother" + -onym "name"

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Examples

  • According to her daughter, Dr. Mariassa Bat-Miriam Katsenelson, Yokheved Bat-Miriam intentionally changed her last name from a patronym (Zhelezniak) to a matronym, Bat-Miriam, “because she saw herself as the daughter of that same Miriam, the sister of Moses, the first woman poet in Israel.”

    Yokheved Bat-Miriam (Zhelezhniak). 2009

  • A matronym on the other hand is said to be marked by the other genitive, -l a gentilicium coming from the mother's side.

    Contradictions with authors' accounts of Etruscan word Rasna 2009

  • A matronym on the other hand is said to be marked by the other genitive, -l a gentilicium coming from the mother's side.

    Contradictions with authors' accounts of Etruscan word Rasna 2009

  • Her first Hebrew poem was published under the matronym “Bat-Hedvah,” Hedvah being a Hebraized form of her mother’s nickname “Freude” (Yaoz-Kest in Anda: Kovez Ma’amarim, 132).

    Anda Pinkerfeld Amir. 2009

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