Imaginary Orthodox naming system
Sep. 11th, 2011 01:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
steorran_woruldeA while ago, probably at Christmas, my friend Mark and I were talking about naming systems, and trying to come up with an Orthodox-friendly naming system that would fulfil several constraints:
-It should be gender-equal
-It should have a way of tracing descent
-There should be a single family name shared by all members of a household/nuclear family
I came up with a system that worked something like this:
- Each person has a given name, named in Orthodox fashion after a patron saint.
- Each person has two inherited names, one inherited purely matrilineally and one inherited purely patrilineally.
- The order of the inherited names is decided by gender; e.g., if you're female your matrilineal name precedes your patrilineal name, and if you're male your patrilineal name precedes your matrilineal name. Or vice versa.
- Inherited names do not change when you get married; they show descent, and your descent doesn't change when you get married.
- When a couple gets married, they choose a patron saint for the family; that saint's name becomes a family name for the nuclear family. This family name makes it possible to refer to 'the Ignatius family' or 'the Katherine family', etc.
It seems like a pretty good solution that fits all the constraints. However, implementing this naming system in real life is not plausible; you could do the family name = patron saint part, but for the matrilineal name and patrilineal name parts of it to work, you'd have to have societal-level acceptance of the system, which is not going to happen.
The concept of independent matrilineal and patrilineal names is related to a lineage system (not a naming system) that I thought of a long time ago (when I lived on the Sunshine Coast) for one of the societies in Domil: Everyone traces their 'fatherline' and 'motherline' - essentially their purely patrilineal descent and purely matrilineal descent, and families try to track them as far as possible. Fatherlines are more important for males and motherlines are more important for females, but you'd normally know both.
-It should be gender-equal
-It should have a way of tracing descent
-There should be a single family name shared by all members of a household/nuclear family
I came up with a system that worked something like this:
- Each person has a given name, named in Orthodox fashion after a patron saint.
- Each person has two inherited names, one inherited purely matrilineally and one inherited purely patrilineally.
- The order of the inherited names is decided by gender; e.g., if you're female your matrilineal name precedes your patrilineal name, and if you're male your patrilineal name precedes your matrilineal name. Or vice versa.
- Inherited names do not change when you get married; they show descent, and your descent doesn't change when you get married.
- When a couple gets married, they choose a patron saint for the family; that saint's name becomes a family name for the nuclear family. This family name makes it possible to refer to 'the Ignatius family' or 'the Katherine family', etc.
It seems like a pretty good solution that fits all the constraints. However, implementing this naming system in real life is not plausible; you could do the family name = patron saint part, but for the matrilineal name and patrilineal name parts of it to work, you'd have to have societal-level acceptance of the system, which is not going to happen.
The concept of independent matrilineal and patrilineal names is related to a lineage system (not a naming system) that I thought of a long time ago (when I lived on the Sunshine Coast) for one of the societies in Domil: Everyone traces their 'fatherline' and 'motherline' - essentially their purely patrilineal descent and purely matrilineal descent, and families try to track them as far as possible. Fatherlines are more important for males and motherlines are more important for females, but you'd normally know both.