This surname project is for Porteous surname including any known variants (Porteous, Porteus, Portieous, Porteious, Portoues, Portice, Portous, Portes, Portus, Portas, Portass, Portuse, Portis, Pertis, Pertus). The hope of this project is to try and further link together currently unconnected branches of the Porteous family tree. For the Porteous surname, it is thought that all those who descend from a Porteous or any of its other known spellings all descend from one family whose origins are thought to go back to the 1400's in Scotland near present day Tweedsmuir. The power of y-dna testing is that the y chromosome can only be passed from father to son, which tends to match the manner the Porteous surname has been passed from father to son down through the generations. Of course there are many ways that the chain going back in time may have been broken genetically without a break in the passing of the Porteous surname, be it through adoption, indiscretion, etc. If a broad enough sampling is obtained from the many different and unconnected Porteous branches, it is possible that a pattern will develop whereby a representative sample of Porteous dna is observed. Once established that certain branches do in fact descend from a common ancestor the y-dna test can be used to estimate a distance, ie. timeframe, back to the common ancestor from whom both branches descend. This is determined based on the number of changes or mutations observed between the branches which tend to occur on a measurable basis approximately once every 500 years. The y-dna test is meant for any male Porteous interested in trying to learn more about their Porteous ancestry. It may turn out that a person's results do not appear to connect to the rest of the group or possibly even several groups of similar y-dna results. Regardless however, everyone will be able to compare their results to a database of thousands of other people who have submitted samples and possibly make a connection to other surname projects. I hope that there is lots of interest out in the Porteous genealogy community to get a healthy sampling across the many branches of our Porteous family and I encourage anyone who has been thinking about doing a y-dna test to take the next step and go for it. Porteous Surname Project Administrator