A Danish regional project for anyone who has a proven Danish origin on their patrilineal line (males only) or their matrilineal line (males or females), as evidenced by their earliest known ancestor on either or both lines having been born in Denmark. In biology, a 'deme' is a group of related organisms living in a single locality; in this case, the organisms are human beings, the location is Denmark, and the purpose is genealogy! Danes were among the last in Europe to adopt surnames, and a great many of those adopted surnames were patronymics, the result of which has rendered it meaningless for most male Danes to join a typical Y-DNA 'surname project.' The 'Danish Demes' project is intended to overcome that obstacle by providing a regional project where there would be a reasonable expectation of connecting to kin who, despite having different surnames, are genetically related, and to make membership available to both males (Y-DNA and mtDNA) and females (mtDNA only). The Danish Demes project is not limited to the surnames listed above (along with some geographic keywords for the FTDNA search engine); the surnames listed are of those males who have already joined the project. And, yes, some of the surnames listed below don't look obviously Danish, but these are cases of a known Anglicization of the spelling or deliberate name change.