andronym

andronym

English

Etymology

From andro- +‎ -onym. First attested around 1906.

Noun

andronym (plural andronyms)

1. A man's name or a word derived from a man's name.
2. The name of the husband, taken on by the wife.
   • 1991, Michael Herzfeld, “Silence, Submission and Subversion: Toward a Poetics of Womanhood”, in Contested Identities: Gender and Kinship in Modern Greece, →ISBN, page 89:

     A woman joins her husbands patrigroup at marriage; she acquires her husbands surname and andronym, and is treated as the bride of the patrigroup in village usage.

   • 1999, Bryn Mawr Classical Review‎:

     [S]he often uses the andronym rather than the patronym in her identifying inscription.

   • 2000 (?), Ballester X., Quinn R., “L E CUNICULUS ‘RABBIT’ — A CELTIC ETYMOLOGY kovniklo]”, in World Rabbit Science‎, volume 10, number 3, page 125-129:

     There are similar analogies in the Latin andronym Nero or the Lithuanian Nerijus, based on ‘male’ or ‘man’, but also VIRONIUS, and the more frequent VIRONUS, or possibly even VIRIUS and VIROTI, all of which are well documented in the Iberian peninsula

3. A male name adopted by a woman.
   • 2001, K. K. Ruthven, Faking Literature, →ISBN, page 179:

     Critical of Loti's sexist exploitation of women in his serial performances as an "Orientalist" writer, Marie Léra (writing under the andronym of 'Marc Hélys') persuaded a couple of friends she visited in Constantinople to join her in masquerading as veiled Turkish women when meeting the novelist

Translations

name

Greek: ανδρωνυμικό (el) n (andronymikó)

See also

• patronym

Anagrams

• Normandy, monandry