I have the crest for my mother's side of the family too, I should scan it and email it to the guy.
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
My married name is listed, but none of various spellings of my maiden is. My mother's name and her mother's name and my father's mother's name are all listed (although I had to change the country of origin on my mother's mother's maiden name.)
Posted by aretee (Member # 1743) on :
Tante -->
My husband will NOT be happy that the origin of our last nams is French. Posted by Bella Bee (Member # 7027) on :
That site is, historically speaking, completely inaccurate. It thinks that the Norman Conquest applied to the Scottish monarchy too. Also, it thinks that my name comes from the wrong country, just because it's spelt a bit like another name.
Posted by calaban (Member # 2516) on :
Also many people have names based on a patronymic system which presents no difinitive way of establishing if they really ever had a coat of arms. In my fathers geneological record I can go back about seven generations before seeing the patronymic pattern start. However, from my limited knowledge, it seems the history listed for the family crest of Bickerstafe is accurate(One of my matriarcal lines and the only one of "significance" in the quest for a crest.) I guess you should look at the motivation behind such a site, money. But you cant sell a crest to a fellow whos family tree consists of a bastard five or six generations deep one way, a great deal of honest hard working farmers, and many many generations deep the implication that a progenitor might have been the seventh in line to a small family who probably had little real political significance anyway.
Also as I was looking at all the "potential" coat of arms that various names throughout my lineage could produce I noticed that this site does not represent them as they might appear in a history book, rather they impose a shield design on the same background.
Can the setting change around a specific shield in a coat of arms?
Posted by calaban (Member # 2516) on :
I googled coat of arm, it produces a myriad of sites eager to take money. Unfortunately serching multiple sites produced multiple coat of arms for the same name. It seems like this is a business sort of like the ones that give you the "true meaning" of your name. They come up with something that looks authentic with the purpose of selling it to people.
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
That's mostly accurate - the basic design and the logo are right, although the details are wrong.
I absolutely love that my family's motto was "Now Thus! Now Thus!". It's like the medieval's version of Dorothy Parker's question, "What fresh hell is this?"
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
The Davidson family motto has always been "Wisely if sincerely," or -- as my grandfather says his grandfather explained it to him: "You do well when you mean well."
Posted by FlyingCow (Member # 2150) on :
It has the correct coat of arms for my family name.
Of course, I like this one better, and this one even better. (Though we don't use the "O")
That second one I bought from a little bookshop in Galway called Kenny's Bookshop. Awesome place to order books on irish history and irish name history, for any who are interested.
Posted by Artemisia Tridentata (Member # 8746) on :
quote:Also many people have names based on a patronymic system which presents no difinitive way of establishing if they really ever had a coat of arms.
Patronymic names (Andersen), occupation names (Miller), and physical or personality trait names (Black) are all common folk names. Most european immigrants to the US fall into that catagory. Our parents didn't have crests. Any claim to the contrary is not valid and probably made to sell something.
Posted by TheTick (Member # 2883) on :
I have no idea if the one for my last name is correct, not much to go on out on the web. My grandmother's name (Donegan) has conflicting (albeit somewhat similar) 'crests' showing on a few different sites.
Posted by Architraz Warden (Member # 4285) on :
My family crest (from my grandfather's side) always gave me the impression I should mourn something. Most of the definitions I've seen for heraldic elements bears this opinion out.
In other news, another of my family braches seems to have a fairly corageous crest. And a crest motto of "Vincit qui se vincit." (He conquers, who conquers himself.)
And a third seems to have been a Baronet according to their crest. What's the rule on hereditary titles again? I'll have to check with my cousin as to whether or not that's actually part of our family line...
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
Seems completely accurate when I compared it to the coat of arms my family has kept in its records. Its list of origins is as accurate as we have found too. Yes my ancestor was William Bradford the originator of thanksgiving, you may all thank me and my family for you giving you all an excuse once a year to eat like gluttons.
Posted by pH (Member # 1350) on :
My family crest. The one I always saw had those same elements, except I think it had more lions. Rawr!
This is the German version of the crest for "Meyer".
Its a little odd that such a crest would exist, since Meyer is the name of an occupation, sort of like "Smith". Of course you can guess that Meyer means "mayor".
I would think that the Meyer's of Germany were simply the elected heads of their little towns and dwellings. They would probably be of no relation, so why would they have one singular family crest?
Anyway, taken with a huge grain of salt, the crest is pretty interesting.
Its blue and grey, which are my favorite colors in combination. Its got a lion on one side, and a tree on the other. Interesting combination.
Looking at the Danish version, its quite similar, but it has a different looking tree, and is red instead of blue.
I'm not at all surprised that Meyer also has a Jewish origin, as Temple Israel in Omaha has names of their deceased members' names displayed all the way back to the 1800's, and there are simply a TON of Meyer's listed.
![[ROFL]](graemlins/rofl.gif)