Hi, Allan. Your profile shows you've taken an AncestryDNA test. While Ancestry doesn't report on the data, there are yDNA markers included in all versions of Ancestry's autosomal tests. These are the tests that Ancestry began selling in early 2012.
You will need to have downloaded your AncestryDNA raw data file, but once you have that there is an easy way to get at least a high-level naming of your yDNA haplogroup. Go to cladefinder.yseq.net and follow the instructions there.
It's basically a one-step operation and, though the information is limited because only a small number of SNPs, or markers, on the Y chromosome are in your Ancestry test, the result will be accurate at least at a high level.
As Kathie noted, however, while it can be informative genealogically as a way to eliminate possibilities, a haplogroup obtained this way can't serve as a form of positive evidence.
For example, if you and a suspected patrilineal relative have a top-level haplogroup of "R" and "G" respectively, you known you don't share a common male ancestor for over 45,000 years. If you both show the common haplogroup designation of R-M269, to pick one hypothetically, you know you share an ancestor more recently, but it still can't be used as evidence of a genealogical relationship because the origin of M269 still dates to about 12,000 years ago and a huge segment of men with Western European ancestry are also M269.
The Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA can be fascinating to research because it's the only DNA in our bodies that that does not go through recombination, which means it has the potential to reach far back in time. For instance, my Williams line has a fairly mature yDNA subproject with over 30 men having been tested, and while we'll never be able to place a name or an exact location to him, we have a pretty good idea that the common ancestor among all of us probably lived sometime around 900 CE and most likely in the area ranging from southwestern Scotland to northern Wales.
The Big Y test at Family Tree DNA is the gold standard for yDNA, and that has the potential in some cases to date a match as recently as about three generations. That's allowed, for instance, our Williams subproject to know that we have four distinct lines that coalesce sometime around the early 18th century in North Carolina, and to readily identify the correct line a new test-taker belongs to...even if we haven't yet been able to determine the common colonial-era ancestor.
