Phonetically similar and related surnames are included, for example:  BIDDALL, BEDELL, BUDDELL, BIDDELL, BIDDLES, BIDELL, BIDELLE, BIDLE, BEADEL, BEADLE, BEADLES, BEDDAL, BEDDALE, BEDDALL, BEDEL, BEDELLS, BEDHALL, BEDILL, BEDLE, BEEDALL, BEEDALE, BEEDELL, BEEDLE, BEEDLES, BITTLE, BITTLES, etc., and any other reasonable variation.

Yes.  Only males surnamed BIDDLE (or some variation), ones who presumably have a direct-line male BIDDLE ancestry as shown in the chart below, can meaningfully participate in the BIDDLE Y-chromosome DNA Surname Project.
 

Male BIDDLE	Female	Male	Female	Male	Female	Male	Female
Male BIDDLE		Female		Male		Female
Male BIDDLE				Female
Male BIDDLE — test individual

If you are a female BIDDLE descendant or if you are a male BIDDLE descendant who is not surnamed BIDDLE, you will need to find a male BIDDLE relative who is a direct-line BIDDLE descendant to be tested for you.

Not being in a direct-male-line BIDDLE line does not prevent you from being tested, of course.  You may want to join a different surname project (to take advantage of the reduced prices for project participants) or, if there is no project for your surname, to simply be the "first on your block" to have your surname tested.  You may even wish to start a project for your surname and be the group's administrator, as I am for BIDDLE.

All levels of testing are useful for something, but most researchers have found the more markers tested the better. It partly depends on whether you turn out to have a common haplotype or a rare one, but of course, you don't know that until after you've been tested on at least 12 markers.

It's parallel to the situation with names, that is, identifying you is more difficult if you are John SMITH than if you are Engelbert HUMPERDINCK. In identifying John SMITH, it helps greatly to know his middle initial and, better yet, to know his middle name. Adding more markers to someone's haplotype is parallel to knowing John's middle name to help separate him from other John SMITHs. I guess we could think of markers 1-12 as the surname, 13-25 as the first name, and 26-37 as the middle name — and 38-67 as the birth date and place! In other words, the more clues you have to the identity, the more confident you can be of the identification. And the more common the name or haplotype, the more clues you need.

From the standpoint of the project, we would ideally like everyone to go to 67 markers, but you certainly have the option of starting with the 12-marker test, then upgrading to 25, then to 37, then to 67 — DNA testing on the installment plan. How soon you will need to upgrade will likely depend on how rare your haplotype turns out to be. For a unique haplotype (no 12/12 matches), moving to 67 markers isn't as urgent as for a common haplotype (many 12/12 matches). But the bottom line is, sooner or later, you will want to go to at least 37 markers, if not 67, and it's cheaper to do it at the outset (see prices below).

No.  Your sample will be kept in cold storage for a guaranteed 25 years, so it will be available for additional testing.  It can be assumed that, over the next few years, more refined tests will be discovered.  Having your sample in storage will make it possible to have these tests done without submitting additional samples.

If you get an unexpected result, yes.  But even if you get an expected result, one reason to test additional family members is to get them interested in their genealogy and identifying themselves with their ancestry.  DNA testing makes a wonderful gift to bring your family together.

But just as we are warned not to do our genealogy unless we can handle finding out something we'd rather not have known, anyone being DNA tested has to be prepared for an unexpected result because about 2-5% of people tested turn out — through hidden adoption or illicit paternity — not to be descended from their "paper" ancestor.  Such a result is known as an "NPE" (non-paternal event).  In the case of an NPE, the testing of cousins (beginning with a first cousin, then progressing to increasingly distant cousins) can pinpoint where the NPE took place. I describe the NPE's that have occurred in my projects and the degree to which they have been resolved on this web page.

While people today are generally open about adoptions, in the past an adopted infant was much less likely to have ever been told they were adopted.  Likewise, a wife's infidelity was more likely to be hushed up than to result in divorce, even if the infidelity was uncovered.  For these reasons, assume that an NPE occurred in distant generations, rather than near ones, and don't jump to any conclusions because you get one.  Still, consider the feelings of everyone in the family before bringing the NPE out into the open.  By the way, this is the real reason to keep this testing anonymous, not because these STR test results reveal anything medically important about you (they don't).  So, I recommend quietly testing yourself, first. Then, after you have the result, decide whether to share the news with your family (or your fellow genealogists).

There is also some logic to the idea that everyone doing their genealogy would do well, at the outset, to test themselves and at least a first cousin, just to be certain they don't spend literally years working on the wrong surname. On the other hand, if other descendants of your progenitor have already been tested and you match them, you have your answer and need not test any near cousins.

There may be some urgency involved with testing your family's senior members.  For example, my father was 86 years old when I paid for his testing. He even joked with me at the time, "Oh, you want to get this done before I die."  Well, yes, actually, and I'm relieved that his testing was completed because he has since passed away.

Yes.  Typically, one would first join their surname project, then, once results are returned, possibly join one or more appropriate haplogroup, regional, or ethnic projects.  There's a blue Join button on your member page that will allow you to request membership in additional projects (pending approval of that project's admin). There is no cost for joining additional projects.

No, your Y-DNA test cannot help you with your mother's ancestry.  Your Y-chromosome came from your father, and only from your father, so Y-chromosome DNA testing will be of no help in elucidating your mother's ancestry.  To research your mother's surname, you will need to get her father or one of her brothers or uncles or nephews of that surname to be tested for you.  I know this limitation is frustrating, but it's precisely because the Y-chromosome is handed down only from father to son that makes it useful to genealogists.

Taking the sample is simple and painless, just read the directions carefully and don't hurry.  The kit arrives by mail and contains three plastic sticks — rather like small toothbrushes, without the bristles.  You take the sample by rubbing the inside of your cheek with the stick, then dropping the detachable tip into a vial.  You take the samples at least eight hours apart.  Then put the vials in the provided mailer and return the kit by mail.

You establish your level of privacy by the way you join and the options you select.

If you want complete privacy, you should not join a project, but simply order and pay for your testing on your own.  That way, your identity and results are known only to you (and to FamilyTreeDNA, obviously).

If you join a project, the project administrator knows who you are (i.e., has access to your full name and contact information), but only your test data, lineage, and surname — not your given name(s) — will be placed in public view on the project's web sites.  The administrator will not reveal your identity to anyone, not even to other project members or administrators.  That doesn't prevent you from revealing yourself, just that neither FTDNA nor I will do it.

Alternatively, there is a way to join the project without allowing FTDNA to know your identity, and that is by having the project administrator purchase the kit for you. Your given name would simply be "Anonymous" in the FTDNA database, and the project admin would be the contact person. The project admin will sign the Release and your data will be shared with the project.

By signing the Release that comes with your kit, your name and email address will be shared with others tested at FamilyTreeDNA whose results match yours (and vice versa), but your name and email address will still not be displayed at the project web sites nor be released by the project administrator.  Signing the Release is a condition for joining this project as it is unfair to refuse to share your results with others when others are sharing their results with you.  If you don't want to be the contact person (i.e., if you don't want to be emailed by contacts), we can substitute your family genealogist or me as the contact person.

You do have the option of Restricting match sharing to just the members of your surname project, rather than with everyone else tested at FamilyTreeDNA, the latter of which is obviously a much larger database.  Please note that the FTDNA database is not searchable or browsable, not even by project administrators, much less by the general public, which has no access to the database.

If you want to get the most from your testing, then share the most, that is:  join a project, sign the Release, remove the sharing Restriction (via the checkbox at your member page), and upload your results to Ysearch (see next FAQ).

Lastly, and speaking personally (not as a representative of FamilyTreeDNA), I frankly do not see the need for privacy.  To demonstrate just how unconcerned I am, I have placed my mtDNA results online at my website and put my mtDNA FGS (Full Genetic Sequence) online at GenBank (EU979542).  You should be much more concerned about someone knowing your Social Security number or reading your bank account number off your checks or your credit card numbers off your sales slips.  (And I'd much rather have someone know my DNA test results than my weight!)  I do have these caveats:  I recommend keeping the fact that you are being tested quiet until you've seen the results because, if your results uncover a hidden adoption or illicit paternity, you may want to limit with whom you share that information.  I made certain I was an mtDNA match with a first cousin before I "went public" with my HVR1+HVR2 results; and I got a clean slate from a medical analysis of my mtDNA FGS before I uploaded the results to GenBank.  With regard to Y-DNA testing, my father has passed away since being tested, so I have de-privatized his name (scroll to the right to see the lineage).  I didn't see any reason to keep his identity secret in the first place, so I certainly see no reason to keep it secret now.

See also FamilyTreeDNA's privacy policy.  Your privacy is further maintained by Federal Law:  see the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) summarized on the FTDNA web site.

Ysearch.org is a publicly available and searchable database on the internet, sponsored by FTDNA, but open to anyone regardless of where they were tested. Once your test results have returned, the upload is a few easy clicks from a link on the "Y-DNA Matches" tab of your member page.

Even if you upload your data to Ysearch, your anonymity is still maintained if you so wish.  At Ysearch, only the test results and surname of the test subject are necessarily displayed. You have the options of including the name and origin of the most distant ancestor, uploading a GEDCOM, and/or revealing your name as the contact person (if you wish to remain anonymous, just enter "name witheld" in the contact name field). Visitors contact you via a form that reveals neither your name or email address, giving you the option whether or not to respond and reveal yourself.

The question then becomes, why upload to Ysearch? One reason is to seek a match in a larger database, one that includes individuals tested at other companies, not just FTDNA.  The other is to make your data available to researchers, in particular, to ones studying larger issues, at the paleoanthropological level.  Anything you do to help them ultimately helps you better understand your origins.

Lastly, I hope you will upload just to have mercy on your project admin.  If you don't upload your results, I have to manually enter your test data into Ysearch every time I want to check to see if you have any matches.  Please spare me this tedium!

Results from STR (Short Tandem Repeat) testing should correlate with results from SNP (Single Nucleotide Polymorphism) testing.  In other words, haplotypes should correlate with haplogroups, and they do.  Therefore, in most cases your haplogroup can be deduced from your haplotype.  In cases where the prediction of the haplogroup from the haplotype is weak or equivocal (most likely due to a rare or unique haplotype), FTDNA will do a "backbone" SNP test (without charge) as part of its "haplogroup assurance policy."  This policy means being STR tested at FTDNA assures that you will know your basic haplogroup with certainty, without the added expense of a backbone SNP test.

Deep SNP testing determines your haplogroup subclade and is offered by FTDNA without having to submit another sample.  This determination (and, thus, this testing) is not a requirement for participation in the project, but I hope you will consider doing it, for a number of reasons.

One reason is simply to "contribute to science."  Every one of us who undergoes both STR and SNP testing is contrbuting to the databases that allow these correlations to be made and is contributing to the success of researchers engaged in reconstructing human origins.  And then, there's your own curiosity.  I'm fascinated by the progress being made, and I find it far more meaningful to know that I'm part of the process of discovery and advancement.  If you want recent history to come alive for you and your children, do your family's genealogy.  If you want human history and earth history to come alive for them, have the family DNA tested — and once you have your test results, join the National Geographic Society's Genographic Project (a few easy clicks on your FTDNA member page).

On the practical side, haplogroups are a logical way to organize the project because people in different haplogroups have a zero probability of being closely related, so breaking up the project by haplogroups is simply useful.

FamilyTreeDNA is a for-profit business.  The surname and regional projects based at FamilyTreeDNA are administered by volunteers (I'm a retired zoologist/paleontologist whose hobby is genealogy).  This arrangement is parallel to the mailing lists at RootsWeb.com and the message boards at Ancestry.com, which are administered by volunteers, but owned by a for-profit business.

No.  The sample belongs to you.  Your sample will be kept in storage at FamilyTreeDNA for 25 years, in case you wish to have more tests run (without having to submit another sample) — or you can have the sample destroyed if you so direct.  Your test results will be made public on the project's web site free of charge, which means there can be no incentive for anyone to try to sell the data.

FamilyTreeDNA offers a variety of tests and services.  Please see descriptions of products at their web site:

The prices given there are the "list" the prices you will pay if you do not join a project.  Those who join a project will enjoy discounts on these tests (see table below).  The "bundled" tests represent a savings over purchasing tests separately.