It is a bit confusing about how the Y-DNA test works for surnames. Let me see if I can explain it further. As most of you remember from your science classes, only a male contributes the Y chromosome to the creation of a child (male has xy; female has xx), so if the male contributes the y chromosome the child will be male, if the x chromosome the child will be female. Thus females never have the Y chromosome, so females cannot take the Y-DNA test. A small section of the male Y chromosome (with rare mutations) is transmitted from father to son intact with no changes. It is this small section that is used to test for genealogical relationships in males. Thus, since my mother was my Bowles ancestor, even though I am male, I cannot test for Bowles since it was my father who provided my Y chromosome. Or to put it another way, if your father was a Bowles, and you are his son, then you can test for the Bowles line. Otherwise, it won't work. Sorry ladies. You will have to find a male Bowles somewhere in your line to test. After you test, you can opt to include your results in what is called Y Search. The value in this is that even if your test does not match someone now, it will remain in the database and if someone down the road tests and matches with you, both of you will be notified by email of this match. That is what I am presently hoping for in my surname search. I have taken the liberty of writing to the folks at Family Tree DNA to request information about setting up a surname group. When it arrives I will share it here and then you can decide if you want to proceed. As I said earlier, I am willing to administer the group if you like. It sounds like a number of you are willing to be tested. That's good for the more who test, the better the chances of finding matches. If you want to see how an active surname project works, I recommend that you visit the site at http://pacesociety.org/DNA/results.htm and see how the Pace group is set up. Charlie