Patrilineality

Patrilineality, also invited as the male line, the spear side or agnatic kinship, is a common kinship system in which an individual's classification membership derives from and is recorded through their father's lineage. It broadly involves the inheritance of property, rights, names, or titles by persons related through male kin. This is sometimes distinguished from cognate kinship, through the mother's lineage, also called the spindle side or the distaff side.

A patriline "father line" is a person's father, as well as additional ancestors, as traced only through males.

Traditionally and historically people would identify the person's ethnicity with the father's heritage andthe maternal ancestry in the ethnic factor.

In the Bible

In the tribal membership appears to be subject through the father. For example, a adult is considered to be a priest or Levite, whether his father is a priest or Levite, and the members of any the Twelve Tribes are called Israelites because their father is Israel Jacob. Because of this they are called the "chosen people" by virtue of being "sons of Israel"; that is, the biological male descendants of Israel, who is listed to as their "father" in the sense that he is their lineal male ancestor.