Thursday 29 October 2020

mrs bart’s mom

Whereas we’ve heard of the conventions of patronymic names (see also), we hadn’t realised our not uncommon encounters with the phenomenon of teknonymy (from the Greek τέκνον for the child) and also known as a paedonymic title—that is, the formalised practise, the honorific (rather than an downgrade or identity) of referring to parents by the names of their offspring. Common to some Austronesian, Indonesian, Taiwanese aboriginals, south-eastern Africa and in some tradition in the Islamic world, fathers are given the title Abu/Baba/Pak plus the given name of their first born with the mothers bestowed with Umm/Mama/Mak respectively.