How to find your coat of arms

A coat of arms is a symbol of family history, achievements and exceptionalism. Coats-of-arms play an important role not only as a part of family heritage, but also as a part of culture, history, and art. It is no wonder that many people are interested in searching for their family symbol in the past or creating a family coat of arms in the present. Let’s take a look at the possibilities of finding and creating such an amazing symbol as a family crest.

Find your family crest

Researching family history, learning about your roots, and finding a treasured family crest usually begins with looking through family photo albums and grandparents’ stories. Find out from your relatives what your ancestors did, who they were, by profession, by rank. There may be brave warriors or talented merchants in your family. Then contact the archives. Globalization and digitization allow you to work with historical archives remotely, viewing scanned copies of documents and excerpts. However, if you have the opportunity, come to the archives in person to access all the documents and examine them more closely. In this way, you can trace your family tree and learn many details about the lives of your ancestors.

There are also various genealogy forums where people with similar goals can communicate and share their experiences. You can also find companies or teams of genealogists who will help you collect documents and all the necessary information if you do not have the time or ability to do it personally.

After you have studied all the archival references, extracts, family books; checked all the coats of arms, orders, documents, notes; compiled your family tree several centuries into the past; the long road will finally lead you to a half-abandoned image of your ancestor’s coat of arms in one of the coats of arms of the century before last. So what do you do with it now?

Coat of Arms Restoration

Restoration of a coat of arms often involves restoration of a title. For this purpose, it is necessary not only to have documentary and irrefutable proof of descent, but also to comply with the laws of inheritance of titles. For this reason, there are separate fields of law and history devoted to the study and resolution of this issue in a given country. Of course, if you are sure that the coat of arms you found belonged to your relative, you can use it for your own purposes, as a symbol of your family’s ancient roots and respect for past generations. But it is worth remembering: if the coat of arms belonged to a prominent person of the world, you should be ready to prove your right to this symbol.

When restoring the rights to the coat of arms, you should still turn to lawyers and specialists in this field, but the image of the coat of arms itself also needs to be restored. After all, a scanned copy of the page from the coat of arms in low resolution is probably not enough to realize your goals and ideas. Therefore, it is necessary to digitize the coat of arms as well.

Each coat of arms must have a mandatory semantic description or blazon. This is a document that describes the composition, colors and elements of the coat of arms in a special heraldic language. Thanks to this description it is possible to restore the original image of the lost ancestral symbol even centuries later. However, in the coat of arms not only the composition (“What is drawn?”) is important, but also the artistic execution (“How is drawn?”). Therefore, much depends on the skill of the artist.

In the modern world, the original image of the family coat of arms is preserved thanks to layouts stored on different drives and servers. Thanks to the Internet, your coat of arms will remain unchanged for many years. As you know, once something is on the Internet, it stays there forever.

However, if you want to use your coat of arms comfortably and show all the artistry of the symbol, it is worth digitizing it and creating high-quality layouts in raster or vector graphics. Such layouts will allow you to transfer the coat of arms to the smallest detail on any products and materials: stone, metal, paper, fabric, wood, glass.

Create your own family crest

And what if the family tree can’t be restored? Anything could have happened over the centuries. Or you found your ancestors, but there were no coat of arms owners among them. After all, this symbol was only available to a small number of people. In this case, you can create a new coat of arms for your family. Nowadays all you need is a wish! At the same time, the family coat of arms is still a symbol of prestige, exclusivity and uniqueness.

In most modern countries, to create your own family coat of arms, you do not need to have a hereditary title or to belong to the nobility, and you do not need to register the coat of arms at the state level. You can create your own coat of arms yourself using online programs and templates, or you can turn to professional heraldic workshops and art studios.

Create a family crest online using a template

Many people who want to create a symbol for their family first look for programs where they can get the finished result in two clicks. However, heraldry is a unique combination of history, cultural studies and art. Programs will not be able to select the figures and composition that will reflect the characteristics of your family. The program does not have the full variety of heraldic figures and peculiarities of heraldry in different regions. In addition, all symbols are drawn in the same way, which will make your coat of arms more monotonous. Therefore, the templates are more suitable for cases when the family coat of arms is required in kindergarten or school. And even then it is much more fun, pleasant and useful to create a coat of arms without templates or programs, because in this way the child learns the history of his family, its values and traditions, develops motor skills, imagination and memory.

Of course, programs create a coat of arms virtually or completely free of charge. At the same time, of course, you can’t get quality initial layouts to use the family coat of arms in the interior and decoration. But it is an affordable way to start.

Order a coat of arms design

If you want a truly unique, professional coat of arms for your own family that will be a legacy for future generations and express the most important aspects of your family’s life, it’s worth contacting professionals. Competent specialists, who really understand the intricacies of family heraldry, will create for you an exclusive symbol that reflects your ideas, family values and traditions. Along with the image of the coat of arms, you will receive a semantic description, a blazon, and a set of digital layouts that depict your family’s symbol down to the smallest detail. Traditions of Times are such specialists. Our art studio has extensive experience in creating heraldic symbols – you can see examples of our projects in our portfolio. For more than 15 years we have completed hundreds of projects all over the world, so we guarantee that your family coat of arms will become your pride, a prestigious symbol of your achievements. Upon request, we can reflect in the coat of arms the history of the origin of the family name, the exceptional qualities of the armiger and his family, the main values and traditions of the family, and much more. It is important to note that we do not use templates. Moreover, for each project we create a unique type of symbols and figures. Take a look at our portfolio and compare: even the most common heraldic figures such as lion, oak or eagle look completely different in each coat of arms.

If you are interested in finding your roots, studying your family tree, then you know the value of family. And even if you can’t find your family’s heritage in the archives, you can create it yourself!