Two of the main goals of this project are: 1) to determine how many unique Venter family lines exist in the world today (it is believed that there are only a few); and 2) to determine the geographical origins of these family lines. The origins are believed to be limited to just a few areas. Today there are two locations where major clusters of the Venter surname can be found. One is within the triangle approximated by the cities of Kaiserslautern, Trier and Mainz, in southwestern Germany. The other is in South Africa. Those in South Africa are believed to have come from the Netherlands by way of Germany. Are these two clusters related or do they represent two, or more, completely unrelated Venter lines? Can all the Venters in the German cluster trace their ancestry to a single individual? These are just some of the questions to which we hope to determine the answers.

We are interested in all variants of spelling, some of which are listed below.