noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   The name of someone's father.
2. 2
   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) wordnet
3. 3
   A patronymic surname.

Synonyms

All synonyms

avanymavonymmatronymmatronymicpatronymicpatronymic

Etymology

From Ancient Greek πατήρ (patḗr, “father”) + ὄνυμα (ónuma, “name”). Equivalent to patri- + -onym.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.