What does the Vaughn Family crest look like? (Notice it is not "Vaughan")?

Question

The reason i am asking is beacuse i want to know if it has a griffin in it.

Answer 1

It doesn't look like anything because there is no such thing as a family crest. The crest is the uppermost part of a coat of arms. There is no such thing as a "familiy coat of arms" either. If you are of Irish descent you might have a clan coat of arms. I believe Vaughn is a British, not Irish surname.

Answer 2

House of Names has the following in fine print:

"We encourage you to study the Vaughn genealogy to find out if you descend from someone who bore a particular family crest. . . . . . . . .No families, not even royal houses, can make sound claim to the right to bear arms unless a proven connection is established through attested genealogical records."

Surname product peddlers like House of Names sell them based on a surname and that is not valid.  

Actually, there might have been, for instance, 15 different men with the same surname, not all necessarily related,  that were each granted their own coat of arms, all different. Then some persons  with the same surname were never granted a coat of arms.   No one peddler that sells them on the internet, at airports, at shopping malls, in magazines or solicit by mail will have all 15.  The don't need to in order to sell to people.  The only time they will have more than one is if more than one person with the same surname from different national origins were granted one. Then they will have one of each when in fact there might have been several of each.

See  the links below, one from the British College of Arms(they grant coats of arms) and the other from the most prestigious genealogical organization in the U.S., The National Genealogical Society.

http://www.college-of-arms.gov.uk/Faq.ht...

http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/comconsumerp...

Anytime you see one of those dinky little walnut plaques with a coat of arms and family history on it on someone's den wall, what you see is one that was granted to someone with the same surname as theirs and probably isn't even related.

Answer 3

you can look at 4names or houseofnames for family crests.

Answer 4

Vaughn Coat of Arms

http://www.4crests.com/vaughn-coat-of-ar...

Answer 5

(A crest is the top of a coat of arms.)

houseofnames.com will show you a Coat of Arms that was (probably) once issued to someone with the same surname as yours, BUT:

Coats of arms were designed so knights could tell each other apart when they were buttoned up in their suits of armor. They were given to individuals, not families. If, for instance, every knight named "Smith" (Carpenter, Baker, Johnson . . .) used the same coat of arms, there would be a crowd of knights riding around with the same coat of arms painted on their shields. It would be as confusing as a football game where both sides wore blue uniforms and all the players were number 12.

They were not given to just anyone, either; you had to be rich and want to brag, or else be born to a noble family.

The eldest legitimate son inherits his father's Coats of Arms. He passes it on to his eldest legitimate son, and so on; that's where the myth of a "Family" Coat of arms comes from. Only one person can have a given coat of arms at one time.  

People who sell T-shirts and coffee mugs encourage the gullible to believe Coats of Arms are for a surname. Let us suppose Sir Peregrine Reginald Smith, born in 1412, had a wonderful Coat of Arms, a rampant dragon argent on a field azure.

Which would be easier - to sell that Coat of Arms on coffee mugs to everyone in the world named Smith, or to track down the eldest son of the eldest son of . . . Sir Peregrine, 14 generations later? That 14th great grandson might buy a coffee mug for everyone in his household, but that would only be four mugs.

If you could get 1% of the 3 million people in the USA named Smith to buy a mug, you'd be in retailer's heaven. Some of their ancestors might have been Schmidt in Germany or Smithowski in Poland, but who cares? 30,000 mugs at $11.95 each . . .