X-Match but not on list of Maternal matches

[Groberts]

When I view my fathers matches on his family finder results he has many people that show as an X-Match. However, none of these are listed under the maternal tab. My understanding is that because he is male any X-match that he has must be from his mom's side because he only inherits a Y from his Dad (no x from his dad). Therefore, I can eliminate any X-matches from being related to his father's line.

Question 1 - Am I correct in my understanding?

Question 2 - If so, why do those X-matches not show up under the maternal tab?

Note - Trying to discover who his father is, so I want to know if I can automatically eliminate any X-match matches.

[georgian1950]

Note - Trying to discover who his father is, so I want to know if I can automatically eliminate any X-match matches.

X-matches are not worth worrying about, except for possible relations within a few generations. Distant matches indicate something which few people have figured out.

Your grandfather is more likely to have a common ancestor with a potential match via the way of autosomal DNA. That is where you need to place your effort in my opinion.

Jack

[MMaddi]

Question 2 - If so, why do those X-matches not show up under the maternal tab?

Do you have a close relative (3rd cousin or closer) from your mother's side who's tested and been linked to your tree? For instance, this would include your mother herself, one of her siblings or your first cousin from her side. If not, FTDNA has no way of telling you that a match is on your maternal side.

In general, even without linking a maternal side relative and activating the maternal tab, you're correct in inferring that any segment on the x that your father shares with a match is coming from his maternal side. But, because of limited recombination of the x due to its unique inheritance pattern, only very large shared x segments will probably represent a recent common ancestor. Most shared x segments will represent a distant cousin relationship.

[Groberts]

Yes, he does. And it does link some people to his maternal side. I have 25 matches on that list now. However none of those matches are an X-match.

His X-matches come up as 2nd to 4th cousin and are all still on his regular list. It sounds like I am correct to assume those are on my dad's maternal side, just that the programming algorithm doesn't bring those over to the maternal side because they are not linked to my match on my dad's family tree.

Thanks for the clarification.

Grant