Windows 7: Any Heraldry Nuts Out There?

I'm in the process of working on a coat of arms.

I googled mine coat of arms not long ago.


I have to say, if your avatar is the one you're working on, it's really nice looking.

I started researching my family tree; but I quit when I saw too many of ancestors hanging from it.

Let's see, you've got a quartered field with yellow and grey and a red double-headed eagle. I can sort of blazon that, but I'm concerned with the grey color, I've not run into that "tincture".

In regards to my avatar, thank you for the compliment. They're still in development, but the core shield is done.

Yeah, it can be daunting. Here in the US, where personal arms aren't really recognized, you can assume most anything you like.

in scotland, it goes something like this.

the arms are granted to one person, say his name is Boab MacLeod, clan chief of the MacLeod's, anybody else with the name MacLeod can't use the coat of arms apart from the person who was granted the coat of arms and his direct family (son's etc with a slight variation of the CoA)

not sure about the usa

as for my family tree, i got a guy to do mine last year, had some exciting reading in it, opened a few eyes in our family

To continue with what you already said, let's say that ol
Boab has some American relations who track him down. They can't really claim his arms in the US, though they could certainly take elements from them and incorporate those things in their own (american) arms.

Over in the old country, where arms mean something, heraldry can be serious business. Here in the US, the founders soundly rejected heraldry (while maintaining the custom for their own families.)

im doing the same at the moment, searched the ancestry sites ,got all the information i could gather and sent the lot to Somerset House along with a search fee , so hopefully they will provide the missing "links" in my life

aye, thought it would take a bit of a slant with it, but wasn't sure how it goes

A large proportion of my family seems to consist entirely of missing links

Too many government science experiments, eh?

I tracked down my family CoA and picked up this graphic: