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Patronymic   /pˌætrənˈɪmɪk/   Listen
Patronymic

noun
1.
A family name derived from name of your father or a paternal ancestor (especially with an affix (such as -son in English or O'- in Irish) added to the name of your father or a paternal ancestor).  Synonym: patronym.






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"Patronymic" Quotes from Famous Books



... being the eleventh child, he acquired the title of chevalier, which would naturally have become extinct with the death of the oldest son. The Abbe Dulac suggests that the ten older of the children had died, or that by some family arrangement he was allowed to add the domanial name to the patronymic one. Certainly he never tarnished the family name, which, had it not been for him, ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... Iolaese or Iliese from their founder, became the most powerful race in the island,—just as the Roumains of Wallachia, boasting their descent from Trajan's Dacian colonists, long proved their right to the proud patronymic. ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... you are a preux of the times of my brother's patronymic. And there is my Roland awaiting ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... had obtained a large income from the forgeries for years, and his companion in the iniquity had purchased property extensively. The West Indian estates were certainly in existence, and belonged to a family named Barron, but in the prisoner's case the name was assumed, and in his real patronymic he, with his confederate, was sentenced to ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn

... it doubtless was by a handful of semi-Romanised Welshmen or Britons. The town took the English name of Cissanceaster, or Chichester. Moreover, all around the Chichester district, we still find a group of English clan villages, with the characteristic patronymic termination ing. Such are East and West Wittering, Donnington, Funtington, Didling, and others. It is vraisemblable enough that the little strip of very low coast between Hayling Island and the Arun may have been the first original South Saxon colony. Nor is it by any means impossible ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... (he had finally abolished his patronymic of Cruchot) did not realize any of his ambitious ideas. He died eight days after his election as deputy of Saumur. God, who sees all and never strikes amiss, punished him, no doubt, for his sordid calculations and the legal cleverness ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac

... one he inherited from his progenitors and now borne by his family—was one that stood high in the fashionable world: a family that answered to the more dignified and aristocratic patronymic of Maxwell—a name dating back to the time of Cromwell, with direct lineage from the Earl of Clanworthy—john, Duke of Essex, Lord Beverston—that sort of lineage. No one of the later Maxwells, it is true, had ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith

... lost, or added to. Some day I will fish this effusion out and give it to a waiting world. Those of us whose ancestors landed at Plymouth or Jamestown are very proud of our family names, and even if we trace quite easily to Castle Garden we do not always discard the patronymic. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard

... nearly thirty-one years old, having been born on the 2d of October, 1800. He had belonged originally to Benjamin Turner,—from whom he took his last name, slaves having usually no patronymic;—had then been transferred to Putnam Moore, and then to his present owner. He had, by his own account, felt himself singled out from childhood for some great work; and he had some peculiar marks on his person, which, joined to his mental precocity, were enough to occasion, ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... "Kunyat" patronymic or matronymic; a name beginning with "Abu" (father) or with "Umm" (mother). There are so few proper names in Al-Islam that such surnames, which, as will be seen, are of infinite variety, become necessary to distinguish individuals. Of these ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... air half kindly, half insolent. "Let M. Chardon first put himself in such a position that he will not compromise those who take an interest in him," she said. "If he wishes to drop his patronymic and to bear his mother's name, he should at any rate be on the ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... cannot have been a mere symbol. And as students of SHAKSPEARE have endeavoured to reconstruct the man from his plays so I feel sure that the character of OLLENDORFF, his interests and politics, might very well be reconstructed from a study of his dialogues. One must admit that his Teutonic patronymic is an obstacle to his revival, but that difficulty can be surmounted by the adoption of an alias. For example, by the omission of one of the "f's" and the transposition of one other letter his name, read backwards, becomes Frondello, which is at once euphonious ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various

... dedicated to Thomas Hollis, whom Jackson may have met in Venice. And the Venus and Cupid with a Bow was inscribed to Thomas Brand, lifelong companion of Hollis who later added to his name the latter's patronymic. The Algernon Sidney has no dedication, but since Hollis was a Sidney specialist and edited the first one-volume edition of his works in 1769, there is a strong likelihood that the print had some connection with this liberal gentleman. Jackson ...
— John Baptist Jackson - 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut • Jacob Kainen

... through one or two generations of ancestors who could not read or write, have lost their continuity with the past as effectually as if a deluge had intervened between the last century and this. Even the patronymic has been frequently distorted beyond recognition by slovenly pronunciation during the years when letters were a lost art, and by the phonetic spelling of the first boy in the family who learned the use of the pen. There are Lincolns in Kentucky and Tennessee belonging ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... Monroe seems likely to win for him the permanent glory of having originated the wise policy which that familiar phrase now signifies. It might, however, be shown that by right of true paternity the bantling should have borne a different patronymic. Not only is the "Monroe Doctrine," as that phrase is customarily construed in our day, much more comprehensive than the simple theory first expressed by Monroe and now included in the modern doctrine as a part in the whole, but a principle more fully identical with the imperial one ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse

... suspect that the introduction of the name of 'Pyrrhus' into Acts xx. 4 as the patronymic of 'Sopater of Beraea,' is to be accounted for in this way. A very early gloss it certainly is, for it appears in the Old Latin: yet, the Peshitto knows nothing of it, and the Harkleian rejects it from the text, though not from the margin. Origen and the Bohairic recognize it, but not Chrysostom ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon

... who had hitherto been called Ian Mac-Ivor, or John the son of Ivor, was thereafter distinguished, both in song and genealogy, by the high title of Ian nan Chaistel, or John of the Tower. The descendants of this worthy were so proud of him that the reigning chief always bore the patronymic title of Vich Ian Vohr, i.e. the son of John the Great; while the clan at large, to distinguish them from that from which they had seceded, were denominated Sliochd nan ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... by his territorial designation of "Strathmassie," lived during nearly eighty years of the last century, and died towards its close. His proper patronymic was Macpherson. He was a favourite tenant of the chief of Cluny, and continued to enjoy the benefit of his lease of a large farm in Badenoch, after the misfortunes of the family, and forfeiture of their estate. He was very intimate with his clansman, James Macpherson, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... and they led a sort of cat-and-dog life. Well, about the time I'm talking about, Ferguson got a new undermaster; he only kept one. This chap was an Englishman—name of Bentham—Francis Bentham, to give him his full patronymic, but I don't know where he came from—I don't think ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher

... of me fearful." Quoth the Fowl-let, "I beseech thee by Allah, say me who art thou so I may not of thee feel affright and what be thy bye-name and thy name and to which of the tribes dost trace thy tree?" And quoth the Trap, "My name is Hold-fast[FN282] and my patronymic is Bindfast and my tribe is hight the Sons of Fallfast." Replied the Birdie, "Sooth thou sayest; for such name is truly thy name and such bye-name is without question thy bye-name nor is there any doubt of thy tribe being the noblest of the tribes." The Trap answered him saying, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... yet failed to connect any memories of interest with the possessor of the patronymic mentioned, but the next ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... recent Number, (I regret that I have it not at hand, for an exact quotation), a learned correspondent mentioned, en passant, that the word bacon had the obsolete signification of "dried wood." As a patronymic, BACON has been not a little illustrious, in literature, science, and art; and it would be interesting to know whether the name has its origin in the crackling fagot or in the cured flitch. Can any of your genealogical correspondents ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 46, Saturday, September 14, 1850 • Various

... "the son of his father," it being customary at Athens to add the patronymic, e.g. Xenophon son of Gryllus, Thucydides son of Olorus, etc. See Herod. vi. 14, viii. 90. In official acts the name of the deme was added, eg. Demosthenes son of Demosthenes of Paiane; or of the tribe, at times. Cf. Thuc. viii. 69; Plat. ...
— The Economist • Xenophon

... himself Anthony Elisha Simson; and never failed to make you observe that his patronymic ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... He did have a cleft in his chin. But even that was none of nature's doing. A Mexican with a knife was solely responsible. Yet, worse than all of these disappointments is the fact that his name was not Gerald Van Alstyne. No, indeed. The Leading Man owned to the plain, homely, unromantic patronymic of Bob McGraw. The only thing romantic and—er—literary about Bob McGraw was his Roman-nosed mustang, Friar Tuck—so called because he had been foaled and raised on a wooded range near Sherwood in Mendocino county. ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... distinct people, preserving in a good degree a nationality of their own, but in the lapse of years this disappeared. One hardly knows in our day where to find a genuine Saxon,—'pure English undefiled,'—for the Huguenot blood circulates beneath many a well-known patronymic. Who would imagine that anything French could be traced in the colorless names of White and Black, or the authoritative ones of King and Masters? Still it is a well-known fact that such names, at the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... possessor of a Violin throughout the world. The familiar style is attached to scores of copies and non-copies every week, and despatched to the four quarters of the globe. Little did Andrea imagine that he was destined to be the means of lifting his patronymic of Guarneri to such ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... the first European foot upon the then desert wilds that now bloom, the Garden of the United States; and if a name must be derived from the discoverer, without reference to its euphony, to descend as a patronymic, by such a rule, we should be called Cabotians, instead of Yankees, United Staters, or by the Vespucian title ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay

... quite distinct from theirs. The houses of Argyle, Athol, and Montrose appear in the list, as families who, besides their Highland chiefships, had other stakes and interests in the country; but almost the only person with a Highland patronymic was John MacPharlane of that ilk, a retired scholar who followed antiquarian pursuits in the libraries beneath the Parliament House. The Keltic prefix of "Mac" is most frequently attached to merchants in ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... is it not needful that I should? When I go there I shall be all alone, and my friend Harker Jonathan, nay, pardon me. I fall into my country's habit of putting your patronymic first, my friend Jonathan Harker will not be by my side to correct and aid me. He will be in Exeter, miles away, probably working at papers of the law with my other ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker

... three words "John Ganz-Wurst" meant nothing to the official ear. Over the patronymic he paused in doubt when only halfway through. "Spell it!" he said, and, at the King's dictation, altered ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman



Words linked to "Patronymic" :   name, patronym, Emerald Isle, Ireland, Hibernia



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