How to Make a Family Coat of Arms (Fun Project)

Start with the part the souvenir shops leave out: there is no such thing as a coat of arms for a surname. Arms are granted to a person, and inherited by that person's descendants — they have never belonged to everyone who happens to share a name. The framed "Hart family crest" sold on a seaside high street is a real design belonging to a real family who are almost certainly not yours. That is not a reason to skip this project, though. Designing your own is the honest version, it is genuinely good fun, and it is what heraldry has always actually involved. This page covers why the surname myth is wrong, the real rules worth following, and how to build one that would stand up. To sort out who belongs on it, use the cousin calculator.

No coat of arms belongs to a surname

The single most useful thing to know, and the thing an entire industry depends on you not knowing.

Arms are granted to a person, not to a name. A grant names an individual. It passes to that person's descendants under defined rules, and to nobody else.

Sharing a surname with an armiger gives you nothing. There were thousands of unrelated Smiths and Murphys; a grant to one of them says nothing about any of the others.

So "the Wallace coat of arms" is not a thing that exists. There are arms granted to particular Wallaces. Whether you descend from one of them is a genealogical question, answerable only by tracing your line.

The souvenir trade sells surname-matched designs — a real grant to some family of that name, printed for anyone who asks. Not illegal to sell in most places, and not yours.

Even where you do descend from an armiger, the arms usually pass to one line rather than to everybody. Cadet branches historically bore differenced versions with a small mark added, which is a related idea to the Jr, Sr, II and III name suffixes used to distinguish people carrying the same name.

None of which spoils the project. Every coat of arms in existence was designed by somebody at some point. Designing your own puts you in exactly that tradition.

Crest, arms, achievement

Three words used interchangeably that mean three different things.

The shield is the coat of arms. The design on the shield is the whole of what is formally granted and inherited.

The crest is only the object on top of the helmet — a beast, a bird, a hand holding something. When people say "family crest" they nearly always mean the shield.

The achievement is the whole assembly: shield, helmet, crest, mantling, motto, and sometimes supporters standing either side.

Supporters are rare and restricted in most systems — reserved for peers, corporations and certain officials. If you are inventing your own, adding them is a claim you cannot back, and it is more elegant not to.

The blazon is the written description, in a compressed technical language: azure, a chevron or between three mullets argent. It is the definitive form — the drawing is just one artist's rendering of it, and old terms like these are the same territory as the vocabulary in old genealogy terms.

Where the rules still have force

Worth knowing before you put anything on a gate post.

England, Wales and Northern Ireland: arms are granted by the College of Arms. Using arms you are not entitled to is not criminal, but it is not respectable either, and the Court of Chivalry technically still exists.

Scotland is genuinely different. Arms are regulated by the Court of the Lord Lyon, and bearing arms you have no right to is a statutory offense that has been prosecuted in living memory. Scotland also requires every armiger's arms to be individually distinct, so even a son matriculates a differenced version.

Ireland grants through the Chief Herald of Ireland.

The United States has no heraldic authority at all. Anyone may design and use arms; nobody grants or protects them. Plenty of American families have a designed device with no official standing and no problem.

Canada, South Africa and several other countries run their own granting authorities.

The safe position everywhere is the same: design something new that is yours, and do not display arms belonging to someone else. That sidesteps every jurisdiction on this list.

The rule of tincture

The one real heraldic rule, and the reason well-made arms read clearly from a distance.

Heraldic colors divide into two groups. Metals: or (gold or yellow) and argent (silver or white). Colors: gules (red), azure (blue), vert (green), sable (black), purpure (purple).

Never place a metal on a metal, or a color on a color. Gold on silver fails. Red on blue fails. Gold on red works; blue on silver works.

The reason is practical, not fussy. Arms had to be identified across a battlefield or a tournament ground. Light-on-dark reads at distance; dark-on-dark does not.

Furs — ermine and vair — sit outside the rule and may be placed against either.

Follow it and your design will look right even to someone who cannot say why. Break it and it looks subtly wrong in the same way.

Ignore the color-meaning charts that claim red means military strength and blue means loyalty. Those were invented centuries after the fact by writers with books to sell, and no herald ever assigned them. Choose colors you like.

Designing the shield

The practical steps, in the order that works.

Choose a division of the field first. A plain field, or split per pale (vertically), per fess (horizontally), per bend (diagonally), or quarterly (in four). Quarterly is the most popular for a family project because it gives four spaces for four ideas.

Then choose two tinctures, one metal and one color, obeying the rule above.

Then add an ordinary if you want one — a chevron, a bend, a cross, a fess. These bold geometric bands are the oldest and strongest heraldic shapes, and they carry a design on their own.

Then the charges — the objects. Two or three at most.

Keep it simple. The best historic arms are startlingly plain, because they had to be recognizable at a gallop. A shield crowded with detail is a modern mistake.

Sketch it small. If it does not read at the size of a postage stamp, it is too busy. That single test fixes most amateur designs.

Choosing what goes on it

The enjoyable part, and where the family history actually enters.

Occupations. A miner's lamp, a plow, a ship, a loom, an anvil. If you know what your ancestors did, this is the most meaningful choice available.

Places. A wave for a coastal family, a mountain, a wheatsheaf for a farming county, an emblem of the country somebody emigrated from.

Migration. A ship is the most-used charge in modern family arms for good reason.

Names that translate. A bird for anyone called Bird, a hart for Hart, three horseshoes for a Smith. This is canting arms, a real and long-standing tradition that heralds have always enjoyed.

Faith, values or something the family is known for, provided it means something to the people who will look at it.

One thing per person or branch, if you are using quarters — a useful way to include several sides of a family without argument.

And avoid recycling somebody else's charges because they look impressive. Lions rampant are magnificent and belong to a great many people already.

The motto, the crest and the rest

The finishing pieces.

The motto is the least regulated part and the easiest to make yours. It sits on a scroll, usually beneath the shield, and may be in any language.

Short beats clever. Three or four words. Something a family actually says, or something true about them, beats a Latin phrase from a list.

Latin is traditional but not required. A motto in the language your family actually spoke is more honest and often more moving.

The crest sits above a helmet and is drawn as if standing on a twisted cloth wreath in the two main tinctures.

Mantling is the decorative cloth flowing from the helmet, colored to match. Purely ornamental, and where an illustrator can have fun.

Leave supporters off, as above.

Write your blazon down once you are happy — the words are the record, and any artist can redraw from them in fifty years.

Making it, and what to make it into

Turning a design into an object.

Draw it on paper first, in pencil, at postcard size.

Paint or print it at the size it will be displayed, in flat color rather than shading. Heraldry is deliberately flat.

As a gift, a framed print of a designed family arms with the blazon written beneath is unusual and genuinely personal — more ideas in that vein are in family tree gift ideas.

At a reunion, a large blank shield with a pen beside it, so relatives can add their own quarter, is a memorable centrepiece — the planning around that is in family reunion checklist.

With children, a shield divided into four with one drawing per quarter and a motto along the bottom is one of the best activities going, and it sits alongside the ones in family tree crafts for kids.

In a classroom, it works as a design exercise with real constraints — the rule of tincture, the small-size test, and no copying — and pairs well with the projects in family tree school project ideas.

Date and sign it, and record who designed it and why each element was chosen. That note is what makes it inheritable rather than decorative.

FAQ

Does every family have a coat of arms?

No. Arms were granted to individuals, never to surnames, and most families never had any. A design sold under your surname belongs to some other family who happened to share the name.

What is the difference between a crest and a coat of arms?

The coat of arms is the design on the shield. The crest is only the object on top of the helmet. Most people who say "family crest" mean the shield, and the whole assembly is properly called an achievement.

Is it legal to make your own coat of arms?

In most countries, yes — designing something new and not claiming another family's arms is fine. Scotland is the exception worth respecting: bearing arms there without the Lord Lyon's authority is a statutory offense.

What is the rule of tincture?

Never place a metal on a metal or a color on a color. Gold and silver are metals; red, blue, green, black and purple are colors. It exists so arms stay legible at a distance, and following it makes any design look right.

Do heraldic colors have meanings?

Not originally. The charts saying red means courage and blue means loyalty were invented long after heraldry began, by writers rather than heralds. Choose the colors you like and that obey the tincture rule.

How do I find out if I am entitled to arms?

By tracing your line, not your surname. You would need a documented descent from a person to whom arms were granted, in the manner that particular grant allows — which is a genealogy project rather than a search by name.

Design one rather than buy one

The honest answer to "what is my family's coat of arms" is that no coat of arms has ever belonged to a surname, and the framed one on sale under your name is somebody else's. The far better project is to make your own. Choose a division of the shield, two tinctures — one metal, one color, never two of a kind — and two or three charges that mean something: what your ancestors did, where they came from, the sea they crossed. Keep it plain enough to read at postage-stamp size, add a short motto in a language your family actually spoke, and write the blazon down so it can be redrawn a century from now. Then sign and date it. Use the cousin calculator when you are working out which branches deserve a quarter.