Common Mistakes People Make with Family Crests (and How to Avoid Them)

Somewhere in a drawer at home, there is probably an inexpensive print of "your family crest" — a shield, a scroll with a surname, and a confident claim that it belongs to everyone who shares that name. Usually it belongs to nobody in the household. Heraldry rewards patience and punishes assumptions, and the same handful of mistakes comes up again and again. Here is what to watch for, and what to do instead.

A crest is not a surname badge

This is the root of most of the others. In British heraldry, a coat of arms is granted to, or confirmed for, a particular person. It then descends by inheritance. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland that generally follows the male line, with marks of difference added for younger sons; in Scotland, arms are treated as property, and junior branches normally have their own differenced version matriculated with the Lord Lyon. Either way, there is no such thing as "the arms of the Jones family" in the sense of everyone called Jones.

Two unrelated families sharing a surname may hold quite different arms, or none at all — and most people with any given surname hold none. The same caution applies to spelling variants. Leigh, Lee and Lea are sometimes the same family and sometimes three unconnected ones. A change of spelling is a clue to investigate, not a conclusion to print on a mug.

Calling the whole thing a "crest"

The crest is one small piece of the design. It sits on top of the helmet, held in place by the torse. The full composition is a coat of arms, or an achievement. Mixing up the parts is not pedantry: if you ask an heraldic artist or a heraldic authority for "the crest" and mean the shield, you may end up with a beautifully painted, expensive object that says something you did not intend.

• Shield (escutcheon): the central surface bearing the main design.
• Helm: the helmet above the shield; its style and orientation carry meaning.
• Mantling: the draped cloth, usually shown as stylised foliage, traditionally the cloth a knight's sword had cut.
• Torse: the twisted band of two colours that holds the mantling and the crest.
• Crest: only the device on top — a lion's head, a mailed fist, a boar, a plume of feathers.
• Motto: the words on a scroll, in any language; it was often added later and is sometimes not part of the original grant.
• Supporters: the figures holding up the shield, normally reserved for peers, certain knights and some corporate bodies.

Finding it does not mean owning it

A bookplate, a family bible, a memorial brass, a pub sign, a search result — any of these can put a design in front of you with your surname attached. None of them proves that you may use it. What you need is a chain: which individual was granted these arms, and how do you descend from that person?

The work is slower than it looks. Printed armorials such as Burke's General Armory or Papworth's Ordinary are indexes, not proofs, and they contain errors. The reliable routes are the records of the College of Arms in London for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the Court of the Lord Lyon in Edinburgh for Scotland, along with wills, certificates and parish registers to connect the generations.

Bear in mind that arms can lie dormant for a century or more and still descend to a living person. Extinction is hard to prove and easy to assume, so a design that looks abandoned is often nothing of the sort. Customs and legal standing also differ across the UK, and Scottish arms are protected in ways that English and Welsh arms are not. Where the outcome matters, take advice from the relevant heraldic authority or a solicitor who works in this area rather than trusting a website's confident assertion.

The bucket-shop trap

Sellers who advertise "your family crest" on rings, plaques and stationery generally work from a small shelf of old armorials. They look up the surname, find an entry, and reproduce it. That entry belongs to one armigerous individual. It may be a family that died out in the eighteenth century, a single cadet branch, or a Scottish or Irish family with no connection to your ancestors whatsoever.

Two questions cut through most of it. Which individual were these arms granted to, and when? Legitimate artists, engravers and archivists will answer both, or say plainly that they cannot. If the reply is "the family of that name", the design is decorative, not yours.

Borrowing honours you have not been granted

Once people start designing, the temptation is to add a little grandeur. Supporters either side of the shield, a coronet above it, a barred tilting helm, insignia of an order of chivalry — all of these communicate specific status, and using them without entitlement is the heraldic equivalent of wearing a medal you were not awarded. Helmet types are conventionally graded, too, and the wrong one is noticeable to anyone who knows the conventions.

If you want arms that are genuinely yours, the route is a grant or matriculation, or a personal design kept clearly distinct from any existing coat of arms. If you simply want something handsome for a gift, keep it modest and honest and it will age better.

The picture is not the arms

Arms are defined by their blazon — the written description — not by a particular drawing. Two artists can paint the same arms and produce noticeably different images, because the blazon fixes the essentials and leaves the rest to taste. Colours drift in reproduction: gold becomes yellow, silver becomes grey, and a greyhound can be mistaken for a wolf. Details get misread in low-resolution scans, and small errors are then copied faithfully for years.

As a sanity check, remember the rule of tincture: metal should not be placed on metal, nor colour on colour. It is not absolute, but a design that breaks it usually means someone has misread a faded original. If you are working from an old photograph, using raking light and a high-resolution scan will reveal far more than a straight copy.

Getting it right: a short checklist

1. Start with a person, not a surname. Find the individual to whom the arms were granted or confirmed.
2. Record the blazon if you can, not just an image.
3. Trace your descent from that person with documents, not family stories alone.
4. Check the relevant authority — the College of Arms or the Court of the Lord Lyon.
5. If nothing checks out, commission something of your own rather than borrowing.
6. Keep notes, copies and photographs together, so the next person in the family does not have to start again.

None of this takes the pleasure out of heraldry. It sharpens it. A coat of arms that you can trace to a named ancestor, and describe in the correct words, is far more interesting than a souvenir that flatters a surname. Take the extra step, and the story you end up with will be your family's own.

Photo: Nothing Ahead / Pexels