Bette and all, Naming patterns were quite different in Germany than in England, apparently. In the research that several of the German Bunker(s) have done these past several years, we found that surnames varied considerably, sometimes because a man who married into a family might take the surname of the woman if the land was in her family's name. Another possibility was that many individuals might be known both by the surname of the landowner on whose land they lived (e.g., Bunker at Feldmann farm), yet the same individuals might also have their own surnames. We found siblings living in the same household who had different surnames on German records! And then, of course, there are variant spellings because so few individuals were literate and there was no standard orthography at the time. It all makes for a most challenging genealogical puzzle. I will be very interested to see how German and German-American Bunker descendanrs are linked to one another. Of course, once we begin testi! ng the Irish Bunkers, we will likely find links to both the English and German Bunkers! Best wishes, Suzanne Bunkers ----------------------------------------------- Bette wrote: We tested our first German American and he did not match the Devon, England Bunkers. He can trace his ancestry back to Germany to a man who was named Hesemann and took the name Buehnker. He has ancestors in Ohio. It is very interesting that even though he does not match anyone named Bunker so far, he does match 5 other men with different names. Right now we are trying to get them together. How interesting to know that others were descended from the same man but took different names. So far we have found two men named Berton and it seems they are related to people with many spellings and variations of that name. This is an adventure we hope to pursue further. We are looking for others to join our test. To learn more about it go to http://www.bunkerfamily.org <http://www.bunkerfamily.org> and click on the DNA surname project link.