The Most Frequently Asked Question on rec.heraldry is:

"My name is Smith, what are my arms?"

A common variant is:

"Some guy in a mall told me he could look up my name in a database and tell me my family arms? Can I trust him?"

     This posting answers these questions. We've noticed that these questions are usually asked by people from the US, so the answers are intended to fit the US context.

     The short answer is this: Your family probably has no coat of arms. Most families don't. Discovering whether your family has arms is a time-consuming problem in genealogy. Anyone who claims to be able to find your arms simply by looking in a book or a database is either ignorant or lying.

    To explain in more detail, we have to clear up some misconceptions:

• There is no such thing as "the arms of Smith". Arms are associated with families or lineages. A coat was inherited by a child from his parent, either intact or somewhat modified. But any individual's claim to use a specific historical coat of arms rests on a family link with someone acknowledged to have used those arms.
• Many unrelated families share the same surname. Sharing a surname does not mean that you share the right to the same arms.
• Conversely, many families with different names have the same coat of arms. A coat of arms does not uniquely identify a family.
• A fairly small fraction of society ever used coats of arms at any time. Only a few Smith families actually bore arms. Arms were used throughout the social scale, but much more so at the top than at the bottom. Most Americans are descended from lower-class immigrants. Statistically, then, the chance that an immigrant ancestor of yours bore arms is not very high.
• No one on Earth has a complete record of all coats of arms used or granted throughout history.
• Therefore, if your name is Smith, and a book or a guy in a mall shows you a coat of arms with the name Smith under it, that proves nothing at all. You are just as likely to be related to the founder of the Virginia colony, or the Scottish economist, or the nephew of Senator Kennedy, or none of the above. The guy in the mall with the database is fudging these issues and trying to sell you a pig in a poke. His database is certainly incomplete and probably very inaccurate, and he doesn't care about pedigrees. He is just out to exploit the similarity between your name and some name in his database.
• In order to determine what your arms are, we would need much more than your name: We would need your pedigree traced back to someone who used a coat of arms. The standard of proof will vary with the needs: If you are of Scottish descent and wish to matriculate arms with the Scottish heraldic authority, you'd better have a well-documented pedigree, probably stretching over several centuries. If you only want to use arms for yourself in a country such as the USA where heraldry is unregulated, then it is just a matter of satisfying yourself. Strictly genealogical matters are best discussed in the soc.genealogy* hierarchy.

    On the other hand, if you do live in a country where heraldry is unregulated, you are free to choose arms for yourself. You can choose any arms you want, whether or not your family relationships entitle you to those arms. You may decide to choose unique arms, created especially for you, or borrow arms from some existing family. Some people consider it bad taste to use existing arms if you cannot prove your descent from the family that bore them. In any case, it behooves you to acquaint yourself with heraldry, its rules and its aesthetics, so that you can design, or have designed for you, a coat that pleases you and others as well.

     The monthly FAQ posting, which can be found at http://www.heraldica.org/faqs/heraldry.faq provides more detailed information and a bibliography.

The Second Most Frequently Asked Question on rec.heraldry is:

"My coat of arms contains a widget azure. What is the significance of a widget in heraldry?

This posting answers this question.

     The short answer is that there are no systematic meanings assigned to the charges and tinctures in arms. There is no way to look at a set of arms and decipher the original designer's intended symbolism.

     At various times in the history of heraldry -- mostly between the 16th and early 19th centuries, and mostly in England -- various authors tried to create systems of meaning for every charge and tincture in arms. Some of them went so far as to claim that their system had always been in use, and therefore that the symbolism of ancient arms could be deduced from their charts. It was all bunk. Some heralds probably did design arms according to one or another of these systems -- which aren't consistent, by the way -- but we have no way of know, in general, when this was done.

     In some instances, the heraldic designer left us notes explaining why he chose certain charges for someone's arms. Designer's notes are almost standard in modern cases, but as you look further back in history, they quickly become an exceptional rarity. We do have a few amusing early examples. One herald from the Tudor period, for example, left us the information that he provided a particular knight with arms featuring an ox because the knight had been castrated in battle.

     In the absence of specific information about a set of arms, we can only guess what symbolism was intended by the designer. Of course, we can make informed guesses.

     Some charges are easy: Crosses were probably always intended to express Christian devotion. Lions and eagles have always represented nobility. And there is a small number of charges which always have a particular meaning: the red hand of Ulster, the royal tressure of Scotland, etc. But when we look at more common charges or at tinctures, there is no general answer.

     To go further, you need to research the person who bore the arms and the circumstances under which he received or adopt them. This research may reveal other clues to the motives of the designer.

     For example, we might find that the arms are a variant of arms held by a related family. This practice is called "cadency" and is quite common in medieval armory. A similar practice might be called "feudal cadency"; some minor noblemen adopted arms incorporating a charge from the arms of their overlords.

     Merchants and craftsmen often included the tools of the trades in their arms, or an attribute of their patron saint.

     Very frequently, the family name of the original owner of the arms sounds similar to the name of one of the charges used in his arms. This practice is called "canting" and was extremely common in medieval armorial design. Sometimes the cant is easy to recognize: A lion for "Lyons" or a fox for "Fuchs". Sometimes it takes specialized knowledge: The fish in the arms of "de Lucy" is called a "lucy", an archaic name for a species of pike. The cant can involve more than one language: An English family "Harrison" bears a hedgehog, called "herisson" in Middle French.

     There are other patterns of armorial design found in one part of Europe or another, at one time or another. The more we know of the history of the people who originally bore the arms, we more likely we can make an intelligent guess as to the intent of the designer of those arms. But when it comes right down to it, we can very seldom know for certain.

     The monthly FAQ posting, which can be found at http://www.heraldica.org/faqs/heraldry.faq provides more detailed information and a bibliography.

This MFAQ written by: Josh Mittleman (mittle@panix.com) and Francois Velde (velde@jhu.edu). The opinions herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of The American College of Heraldry.

Francois Velde
Johns Hopkins University
velde@jhu.edu