Memealogy

Memeaology is the study of cultural family lineages. It is named after geneaology - the study of family lineages.

Memeaology is closely related to phylomemetics, just as geneaology - is closely related to phylogenetics. The difference is that the "phylo-" terms refer to groups. The "-ology" terms are more general.

Memealogy seems to be one of the more neglected terms that arises out of the gene-meme substitution pattern for manufacturing cultural evolution terminology out of the existing gene-based terminology.

I am not sure how to best explain memeaology's poor penetration to date. Maybe it has something to do with the difficulty of pronouncing it.

Anyhow, Memealogy is a fine term, and I recommend that it be more widely adopted.

There are some existing sites devoted to Memeaology. The best-known one is KnowYourMeme - which specializes in Internet Memes. Other sites with some Memeaology content include Wikipedia, TVTropes and UrbanDictionary.