Armas de linajes que aparecen en la Heráldica
Institucional de Hispania
Arms of families that are used on the Hispania
Civic Heraldry
Las armas que aparecen en estas páginas pertenecen
a familias, nunca a apellidos. La coincidencia de apellidos no significa
parentesco. Las armas de una determinada familia no son las de todas las
personas que llevan el mismo apellido.
The arms depicted in these pages belong to
families, never to family names. The coincidence of family names does not
mean to be members of the same family. The arms of a family are not the
arms of all the persons who use the same family name.
"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 moreso 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 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 decypher 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 absense 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.
