In comparison with the European average, matronymics (names deriving from the bearer's mother, including family names formed in this way) are surprisingly frequent in the Yiddish language area although it is customary to regard traditional Jewish culture, and perhaps that of Eastern European Jewry in particular, as patriarchal par excellence. The study traces the spatial and temporal spread of matronymics from biblical times to the present, with special reference to Yiddish literature of the 19th and 20th centuries. It then sets out to uncover the fascinating complementarity in the causes for this phenomenon between social history (here: family structures) and the history of mentality (here: religion).