Our Goal
Seek to popularize a system of matronymics that would help genealogists in the future use mtDNA with the same precision as y-chromosome data is presently used. Pioneer a new idea with regard to mtDNA and to break new ground with regard to use of the new genealogical tools science is providing us with.
How does Matronymics differ from
Patronymics?The y-chromosome is culturally “tagged” (to use a term from corpus linguistics). That is, surnames pass from the father and not from the mother throughout most (though not all) of the world. A technical word to describe surnames passing down through the father is ”patronymic”.
Surnames that pass down the generations through the mother rather than the father are ”matronymics”. The reason y-chromosome DNA data is so much more useful than mtDNA data is because the wide-spread use of patronymics make it far easier to identify potential family relationships.
mtDNA could be equally as useful, if the “tagging” aspects of it could be made more accessible and could be done bottom up rather than top down. What I mean is that current research is rapidly dividing what only three or four years ago was popularly known as “the seven daughters of Eve” into minute categories. This trend will certainly continue.
: See the JEMHART Matronymic line Posted 2005. and descendants of Mahala (Mahulda Spruill ?) SPREWEL* Posted Dec 2007.
ProblemThe identifications are expressed in abstruse combinations of letters and numbers that resemble computer code. A similar situation exists with regard to y-chromosome haplogroups. The problem, in either case, with using such codes is that they are constantly being refined (hence, unstable), that, being abstract combinations, they are hard to keep in one’s head or distinguish, and that, in some cases, they apply to literally millions of individuals. Again, the saving grace of y-chromosome data, is that bottom up tagging exists in the form of patronymics.
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Hikaru Kitabayashi, Chair Department of English Faculty of Foreign Languages Daito Bunka University