Phy or Fye and all the sound-alike versions are a fairly unusual name. Is it German? Is it Irish, Scottish, Sicilian or Andalusian? Most of us have had little success in discovering the origin of our surname surname.

If your research has left you with lots of questions,perhaps DNA testing will help. We are inviting any male with the surname Fye, Phy or any variation, i.e., Fry, Phie, MacPhie, MacFie, etc. to join our surname DNA project. If you are female, perhaps a father, brother, uncle, or cousin could take the test. This project is mainly a Y-DNA project so we are particularly interested in males who carry the surname or a variant.

Several Phys appeared in North Carolina in the mid-1750s and migrated sometime before 1800 to Tennessee (around present day Putnam County)and then spread west to – Missouri, Kansas, Oregon, Arizona, and California. We now believe that we might be descendants of the Jacob Fye line from Lincoln County, North Carolina. Jacob Fye was born in Germany in 1756, was a saddler,and lived in Crowdertown, North Carolina, and died a little before 1800 in Catawba County, North Carolina. He had many descendants but, so far, none of them have DNA tested.

Another Phy researcher has just received her uncle’s DNA results, and has her Phy genealogy back to Pennsylvania and then back to Germany around the time of the American Revolution!  Several Phys came into New York around 1740.We would like to know if your ancestors have similar DNA to your ancestors.

This could be a great opportunity to further our family history research. Remember that the more people who take these tests, the more opportunities we have of finding a match.