coat of arms, how many can we trust?

Question

there are coats of arms for many families, and im sure some are a good example of what the original was. but i also know that alot of pseudo-genealogist will just make up the coats to make money.
how do we tell the difference, and what do the symbols represent?

what were our ancestors trying to say about the family when they chose the symbols?

for example do the stars of david, roses, harps, and the shofar on crests represent judaism?
do fish and ships represent seafaring families?
do lions represent english names?
does the fleur de lis represent a close french background?


how much can we trust them, and can the real ones really give us some insight to our family heritage?

Answer 1

Don't trust these merchants selling coats of arms. The only way a person can know if they are entitled to a coat of arms is to do
tedious research.

They do not belong to surnames. Since there are no laws in the U. S. regarding heraldry many American fall prey to buying those little plaques, or coffee cups or whatever with a coat of arms on it that was granted to someone with their surname and might not even be related.

Coats of arms were granted to individuals who passed them down to their sons.

See the links below, one from the United Kingdom's college-of-arms and the other from the United States' National Genealogical Society.

http://www.college-of-arms.gov.uk/Faq.htm

http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/comconsumerpsst.cfm

Now a sizable portion of the Anglo Saxon people of the American South, including people of humble means, have coats of arms in their family trees. That doesn't mean they are entitled to them. Some, in the South, have the one brought over by their direct ancestor from England about 300-400 years ago. The English that came South in the early colonial days usually came from titled families. The personality difference between North and South probably can be attributed largely to this. The Virginia Company which was older than the Mayflower Company had problems getting off the ground. It was still the ice age and they complained about severe winters, mosquitos ect. However, when the Mayflower landed they were still in the ice age and they were quicker to get going.
Those that went to Virginia were not as accustomed to hard work and hardship.

I heard one seasoned genealogist say that the hard driving, brusque Yankee comes South and does not understand why the South is so laid back.

Answer 2

The reality is that most of Europe never had any coat of arms attached to any family. There were knights, dressed in armor, who decorated their shields with symbols of heraldry. Along the way, someone started recording these and associating them with families. But the crest belonged to the man and died with him. His son might adopt a version of it, making that his own. But it, too, died with him.

Together with that is the reality that most of us didn't have grandfathers who were knights and nobles. So most of us have no claim to any of the heraldric honors that were garnered by others. Just having a similar name doesn't give us any special privileges. If it's your desire to have honest use of a coat of arms, the real way to do this would be to find out which land your paternal line descends from and find the coat of arms for that land. Those of us with bourgeois and lower ancestors would be right to do as our forefathers did...use the colors of our land, not making pretense that our ancestors were the leaders of that land.

Here's one example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Blason_Toulouse.jpg

Answer 3

> there are coats of arms for many families . . .

No. There are many coats of arms for SURNAMES. Most of them are good; for Miller, Baker or Johnson you'll have a choice of dozens, since dozens of men who had C of A bore those surnames. You may or may not be related to them. Claiming one as yours based on surname is like claiming to be related to the founder of "Johnsonville" (or the Earl who had a castle back home in Shropshire) because your last name is Johnson too.

You can trust that most of them were issued to someone with that surname in some country, some time. The real ones will give you insight into your family heritage after you trace your lineage back to the man to whom they were issued.

Answer 4

http://www.clan-duncan.co.uk/images/heraldry/the-right-to-arms.html
regarding who can claim them..

http://www.americancollegeofheraldry.org/achsymbols.html
some background on what some common symbols may mean