In The Seven Daughters of Eve, genetics professor Bryan Sykes tells the story of mitochondrial DNA. Make no mistake: the story is gripping. As it turns out, within each and every one of us, there is a piece of DNA that didn't get scrambled into a unique combination when we were first conceived. This piece, unlike the rest of our genes, is not a combination of mother and father. It is passed exclusively from women to their children. As you read these words, you carry within your flesh something beyond resemblance. This part of you - your mitochondrial DNA - is an exact copy of your mother's.
Equipped with this small but potent tool, Sykes journeys deep into our maternal past, linking present-day people all over the world to the earliest humans of prehistory. The route takes him through an ancient, entirely unexplored family tree: that of women. Only now through the use of DNA is it even possible to draw such a tree. Women tend to adopt their husband's name at marriage, making the lineage of our mothers universally inaccessible. As Sykes puts it, "Against this background it is no surprise that it comes as a revelation to many people that there actually is such a thing as a maternal family tree, a mirror image of the traditional paternal version. I have certainly never seen one drawn out."
He goes on to suggest that while genetics can, at last, shine a light into this murky region of our past - recovering a lineage obfuscated by our (strictly paternal) surnames - for the sake of our future it would be best to "create a new class of name altogether." We all know how the fathername works: when a man has children, be they sons or daughters, they receive his surname. A son will keep this name throughout his life, while a daughter, if married, often takes the surname of her husband, stepping out of her own family tree, into his. Sykes proposes the elegant solution that we simply add one more name to the custom. Sons and daughters would receive not only their father's name (the surname), but their mother's as well (the matriname). Should a daughter get married, she would adopt her husband's surname as before, but keep her matriname. Should a son get married, he would adopt his wife's matriname, and keep his own surname. With the addition of a single name (resulting in a grand total of three) we could build a new relationship with the past. We could maintain contact not only with the history of our fathers, but our mothers as well.
I must say I was intrigued by Sykes' plan. At the same time, it's no mystery why our surname system works as it does. Through history, men have been the vehicle by which land, wealth, and vocation were passed from one generation to the next. Most surnames denote some line of work: the Boyers made bows, the Coopers made barrels, the Smiths made tools, weapons, and horseshoes. Today, of course, one's occupation isn't determined quite so simply, but in the past, work was passed from father to son, and a family's identity hinged on what its men did for a living. So it made sense for the family name to trace the male line.
Yet even if the family work did pass from father to son, the role of mothername would have still been invaluable. Work is, after all, not the only way to derive one's identity. What is it that a woman takes from her own people and passes to the next generation? A set of values, perhaps? A shared culture? Or perhaps it is work that defines her, whether paid or unpaid, just as her husband's work defines him - he, the blacksmith; she and her mothers before her, the weavers. When it comes down to it, what the name points to is less important than the fact that it's there to point at all. Standing together, matriname and surname carry a common meaning: "I have received something from both my father and my mother. I have two family lines."
We have more than two, of course. We each descend from a twisting matrix of family roots, a tangle so complex that no one could track every shoot. On some level, every human being is family. But individual families trace their heritage in a line, and unfortunately, thus far it has been a line that consists only of men. There is no need to shortchange ourselves, to accept half when we can have the whole. The history of our men is valuable and worth knowing; so is the history of our women.
When something is truly absent, it goes unnoticed. When that absence is brought to light, it's often met by one of two reactions: either denial that we ever had a need for this thing in the first place, or realization that it answers something so deep we've never had a way to talk about it.
Mothernames are like this. Bearing a matriname would serve a poignant and powerful role. For women in particular, it would communicate - not just on the level of intellectual assent, but in a deeper, taken-for-granted sort of way - that they share a continuity. That they have the ability to carry something into the future. That they are shareholders in a heritage much larger than themselves. To say it simply, it would mean that they were part of the family. When a woman gets married and chooses to change her name, she often feels a sense of loss as she cuts the nominal tie that links her to her people, a tie that represents her childhood and a part of her identity. A girl with a brother is aware that it is he, not she, who will carry on the family name.
Names are important. They influence how we perceive our world and ourselves. Their influence runs deep within us, infusing our view of things so completely that we rarely think to notice their effect. Names represent what we consider the "givens," and this is precisely where the potential of a mothername lies: to make it a given that both women and men are indispensable to the story - to our story.
As it stands today, of my motherline, I can name only my mother and grandmother. Assuming that my mother can do the same, I have access to only three of the women who came before me. On the other hand, I can trace the men who preceded me all the way back to William Harvey who discovered how blood circulates; I'm sure I could trace it even further if I tried.
It is time to make a change. I have no name, no word, that belongs to the uncharted half of my heritage. My mother's maiden name is not enough; it refers again to the maiden's father, not to a motherline at all. So, of the three women I know (four, including myself), what word might describe us? What name might hint at what we are, what we hold in common, what we have passed and are passing down? What name can I give to my sons and daughters to tell them who their mothers are? What name might my daughters give to their children?
What name would do the same for you?