Am a gen-genealogy newbie. Am contacting matches on 23andMe and ftDNA. I don’t have much exome triangulation to go on yet, so if I correctly understand the process, ideally one compares patriarchs’ surnames lists hoping to see an intersection. Is there an optimal way to share this list with matches depending on how related we seem to be? I.e. if someone is offered as a “3rd to 5th cousin,” it would seem to me un-useful to share with that person my surnames more than X generations old, since it’s less likely our common ancestry goes that far back. Does one provide maybe two alphabetical lists-first, that of all patriarchs up to (e.g.) five generations ago (since that’s likely where we’re most likely to find the common ancestry), and then another list of the next three generations (since that’s a second-most-likely range)? I realize recombination is unpredictable and also that a given DNA overlap is indicative of sum of our “vertical” and “horizontal” relationship distance, but it still seems to me there ought to be one or two statistically-sweet-spot groups of surnames in which to search. Or do we order our surnames from “most likely” to “less likely”? And for a “5th cousin or more distant,” add another list of the next three generations or whatever? AIA if any of my terminology is incorrect. Best, Eric OpenPGP <http://keyserver.pgp.com/vkd/DownloadKey.event?keyid=0xE0F58E0F1AF7E6F2> : 0x1AF7E6F2 ● Skype: oneota ● XMPP/OTR: berekum@jabber.ccc.de <mailto:berekum@jabber.ccc.de> ● Silent Circle: +1 312 614-0159