What’s the parent of a clone called?

Question

Let’s say X is cloned to make Y and Y is cloned to make Z. Is there a word that uniquely identifies X in relation to Y? How about identifying X in relation to Z?

Answer 1

I guess I don't see what is wrong with parent. If I were cloning a plant, the parent plant would be the parent to all the clones.

When they tissue culture hostas and make clones I have seen the source plant called the mother plant.

I guess you could use donor if you wanted to get all clinical. Or perhaps The Clone Daddy if you wanted to be hip.

Answer 2

Clone Source

Example 1

Human Cloning: Science, Ethics, and Public Policy

(...) Consent of the clone source: a key regulatory issue is whether the clone source - the source of the DNA - must consent to the cloning. (...)

Example 2

Liberty, Identity, and Human Cloning

Eugenic: the meaning of the chosen genome.-A second situation involving rearing a child cloned with the consent of a third party clone source arises when a couple who is coitally fertile (or who could reproduce noncoitally with their own gametes) prefers instead to bear and rear a child who is the clone of another person. The clone source could be a parent or family member, a friend, or another whose genes they find desirable. Their claim is that they will have and rear a child only if it is cloned from the DNA of the source they have in mind. Does their procreative liberty include the right to clone and rear?

Now, if the source itself is a clone, I'd say we could refer to it as the clone source's source.

Note: If you're writing scifi, I'd suggest source and grandsource, but the latter I just made up.

Answer 3

I think originator is a reasonable word for a progenitor of a clone, but it's not clear to me whether it should be the first in the line of descendants or the most direct ancestor.