Family Crests/Coats of Arms?

Question

Is there anywhere online where I might be able to find coats of arms for free? I have to find 4 of them, and I really can't afford to pay to download them all. Please help!

Answer 1

well the problem is...whos family's coat of arms are u looking for?

if ur looking for ur own family's crest then ur out of luck coz those things take a lot of investigating to get correct. My grandfather on my dad's side got a private eye to track down our family history....we're Filipino but our lineage and family name trace back to Portugal.

Answer 2

what is that

Answer 3

There really isn't any such thing as a family crest.  A crest is part of a coat of arms. Coats of arms do not belong to surnames. They were and are granted to individual men and are passed down through the direct legitimate male line of descent.  Actually only the oldest son is entitled to his father's coat of arms when he dies and it is passed down from oldest son to oldest son.   The other sons will obtain one with some differences.  So you can see there can be many coats of arms for people with the same surname.

To add to the number of coats of arms, there might have been more than one man with the same surname, not all necessarily related,  that were each granted their own coat of arms, all different. Then some men with that surname were never granted a coat of arms and their descendants aren't entitled to one at all.  Most people aren't despite the fact that peddlers who sell them try to pass them off as if they belong to everyone with a particular surname.

No one peddler that sells them on the internet, at shopping mall, at airports, in magazines will have all of them. They don't need to in order to sell to the gullible.  The only time they will have more than one is if more than one man with the same surname from different national origins were granted one. Then they will have one of each and there might have been more.

The surname product business if one of the bigget scams around.

See the links I am furnishing you under sources.  One from the British College of Arms(they grant coats of arms and are the ultimate authority). Another from the most prestigious genealogical organization in the U.S., The National Genealogical Society.

Also there are links regarding Irish coats of arms and Scottish Coats of Arms.

If this is a school project, please print off the links and give them to your teacher. Also feel free to print off what I have posted here.  I apologize if it isn't but we get a lot of students being given an assignments like this.

Real coats of arms will not be mounted on a walnut plaque. Certainly many of those are valid copies of an original but they just don't belong to everyone with a particular surname.  Also, you won't see a name over, under or across a real coat of arms.