Perhaps I didn't explain well enough. It hasn't been that long since many American genealogists (especially men) focused on their surname and direct male lineage, ignoring even siblings. Females appeared as wives and mothers. Alex Haley's _Roots_ helped shift the emphasis. Not having a fixed surname is still today a strong disincentive for genealogy DNA testing. I agree that it should be a strong incentive to test, but that is not how it is working out. This attitude about surnames affects autosomal testing, as well as Y testing. Too nebulous. Genealogy DNA is mostly an American and Canadian thing. People in the Old World "know" where they're from. Likewise many descendants of recent immigrants feel that way. Perhaps the two current TV programs will affect this attitude. I wish the emphasis on DNA were stronger in the programs. Most of the match inquiries I'm getting on 23andMe are from people who have not gone far enough back on the paper trail to see where we match. A genealogy program worth its salt permits unlimited length of names and an unlimited number of variant and also-known-as names, sorted chronologically. That includes GEDCOM utilities. Let me know when GEDCOM does that. Meanwhile, prospective contacts can look at my long list of names and places on 23andMe. A JPEG ancestor box chart for each of my parents is available. --Ida Skarson McCormick, [email protected] ---------------- From: [email protected] Sent: Monday, May 14, 2012 4:40 AM There are other reasons not yet mentioned for avoiding GEDCOMs. GEDCOM needs to go the way of the dodo. GEDCOMs are inadequate for names from other cultures, that is, ones which did not have fixed surnames and ones which require a good deal more space than the standard American name to identify a person. The GEDCOMs get very messy. <snip>