What is "patronymics"

Usage examples of "patronymics".

Dictys and I watched them go, my wife merrily accepting her escort's elbow, and then went round the remaining figures pensively summoning names and patronymics from that glorious morning for half the afternoon.

I'm on a little firmer ground with Grabowska, as those Old World niceties tended to fall by the wayside around the time patronymics took the place of surnames and overworked civil servants at Ellis Island assigned mothers' names to the male and female children with whom they were immigrating.

Right many of us Fir-Ulad of today are, despite our patronymics, direct descendants of the old Cruithni and, through them, from the Pritani and, for all any save God Almighty now know, from the flint-men the Pritani themselves displaced or slew for the possession of the land.