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From: jpexg@mit-hermes.ARPA (John Purbrick)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: re: Women Heads of State (Summary)
Message-ID: <2216@mit-hermes.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 7-Nov-84 15:27:43 EST
Article-I.D.: mit-herm.2216
Posted: Wed Nov  7 15:27:43 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 8-Nov-84 19:29:12 EST
References: <205@hocsj.UUCP> <2214@mit-hermes.ARPA> <6140@mcvax.UUCP>
Organization: The MIT AI Lab, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 19

> Since in Iceland girls get their surnames from their mother:
> <mother's first name>+dottir, and boys similarly from their father + son,
> then "Finbogasdottir" must be a matronymic, not a patronymic!
> 
> Steven Pemberton, CWI, Amsterdam

If that's true, you are absolutely right. In fact, Magnus Magnusson says in
his notes to the Sagas that there were cases when Icelanders would (do?)
use matronymics rather than patronymics. This would happen if a child's father
had been dead a long time, or if the mother were especially well known. The 
patro/matro-nymic was (is) a pragmatic device to identify people by their
best-known parent so you'd know something about their origins. He didn't say
that women used a matronymic, but that would make Iceland an unusually
feminist society (at least in terms of names). Russians of both sexes (to cite
the only other example I know) use patronynmics only--but only as a middle 
name.

I suggest that any further discussion of this subject take place in net.nlang.