Discover your Family Crest or Coat of Arms • FamilySearch
Discover your Family Crest or Coat of Arms • FamilySearch
Learn about family crests and coats of arms. Learn how to discover if your family has a coat of arms, or how to create your own!
Comments
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"A coat of arms is a symbol used to identify families"
Coat of arms were in most cases granted to a specific person - and were NEVER meant to be used by anyone with the same surname.
It has only been through companies and people of scrupulous intent - that people have come up with this blatantly false information that Coat Arms represent an entire surname.
FAMILYSEARCH clearly needs to clean this page up - with more legit information about what Coat of Arms are and are not.
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Simeon Wilson born leeds yorkshire England 1878
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How do You find your coat of arms?
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A coat of arms was usually granted to individuals. However, why could a coat of arms granted to a Miguel Pereira not also belong to his son's, daughter's, his wife, etc.?
It is essentially a family coat of arms, and proof of this can be seen on many coats of arms of Portuguese families.
Often, a coat of arms of a noble and distinguished family. would be added to the coat of arms of another noble family, as they were united through marriage.
In many instances, a coat of arms would be quartered indicating the union of 4 different families. As members of the 4 families got married and had children, the respective coat of arms of any one of those noble families would invariably be passed down throughout the generations, giving him/her the right to use it.
As such. noble families branched out over the generations. But an individual from that noble family could rightly say that since the coat of arms belonged to his paternal grandfather 4, 5 or 6 generations back, then it is rightly his coat of arms too, as his blood relative. In those days people kept good and accurate genealogical records. Not so much anymore.
Still, it is quite conceivable that a person with the Pereira surname had a blood relative going back many generations. That said, is it such a bad thing for a modern day Pereira to honour the Pereira coat of arms by using it to represent his shared surname? In a very real sense the Pereira family crest is also their own, even if they are not the very first bearer of it.
In many cases, over time the original coat of arms was slightly modified to add a more personalized touch to it, however, the essence and spirit of it was not cheapened ot compromised in any way. In many cases, the quartered, or halved, coat of arms was removed, and the crest was reverted back to its Pereira only surname, as close to the original appearance as possible.
More than anything, a coat of arms is a badge honouring a person's family name. It's not like one usurps another coat of arms which belongs to another family surname - after all, how can you pride or pleasure from that? And you would effectively be only fooling yourself.
What some people do is locate a coat of arms as close to the original one as possible, and then they put their own personal touch on it. Then it is still a legitimate Pereira coat of arms, based mostly on the original one. Nothing wrong with that.
But I agree that some companies use shady tactics only to make a quick buck. But nowadays there is so much information available for a person to research on their own, which in many cases will be more accurate and reliable.
Thanks
George
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My father was passed down a family coat of arms from his father. He has now handed over to me , but we are not sure what it all means or how it was obtained. The name on the coat of arms is my birth surname BEAL
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I’ve been on ancestry and managed to go back generations all men with the name JOHN BEAL and John Williams beal. The name has been passed down to every male since the 18th century. But I cannot see enough details as to why we would have a coat of arms. Any advice would be appreciated
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If it helps we have a unicorn as the crest
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Excellent information on Family Crests !
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Anyone have or can get Family Cretst for Surname " Le Van " - doing book for a friend in Arizaona. - Jeff McBride - Laurel, Md - marganza@hotmail.com
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https://www.thoughtco.com/family-coats-of-arms-1422009
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