Why when someone is sick do we say his mothers name not his father's?
Answer
The Zohar (Bereishis 84a, citing Psalms 86:16, "והושיעה לבן אמתך") says that it's better to pray using the most definite facts available. There can be a slight chance that the sick person isn't really the son of the man who is assumed to be his father (even though, for halachic purposes, we ignore this possibility and follow the majority - Chullin 11b), but his mother's identity is (almost) never in doubt.
I've also seen an answer that the mother is more associated with the body and the father with the soul. (The Zohar, Bereishis 79a, says this about Sarah and Avraham respectively; Ben Yehoyada to Berachos 55b says that this is generally true of all couples.) Thus, when we pray for a sick person's physical recovery, we invoke the mother's name; by contrast, when we pray for a deceased person's soul, we use the name of their father. (Though I believe there are variant customs on that last point too.)
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