Whats the difference between a family crest and a coat of arms?

A coat of arms is the legal and legitimate heraldry, which we do not have in the US. Coats of Arms, by British rules, are issued to a individual person. If you read that last part carefully, it should be clear that a "family crest" is non existant/ a scam..because it is not a family possession. You cannot find what does not exist, as you imagine it..ie something that belongs to a family, or even a surname (not everyone with the same surname is related). http://www.college-of-arms.gov.uk/Faq.htm places selling family crests (or surname "meanings"/ histories) take advantage of persons who have not done their homework.

A crest is merely part of a coat of arms. It is usually a 3 dimensional bird or beast on top of the helmet. Not all coats of arms have a crest. The term "family crest" is a term surname product peddlers use selling coats of arms. The surname product business is a scam. When surnames were taken in Europe during the last millennium it wasn't impossible for legitimate sons of the same man to wind up with a different surname and still each could have shared his with others with no known relationship. The purpose for them was not to identify a man as a member of a family but just to better identify him, frequently for taxation purposes. Too many men with the same given name in the same town or village and they had to have a way of sorting them out. A coat of arms was granted to an individual, not to a family. An exception, I understand, can be Poland where they belong to dynastic families. Now the Scots have a clan badge and what it is is the crest portion of their chief's coat of arms. However the Scots are tough about people using a coat of arms without documented proof that they are entitled to it. I read several years ago where a man had a stain glass window made with a coat of arms he assumed was his. He was told by the Lord Lyon of Scotland to remove it. He didn't or either he delayed and officials from the Lord Lyon went into his home and removed it leaving him a big drafty hole in his wall that had to be covered. I understand the Irish can now do as the Scots. They can use the crest portion of their chief's coat of arms as a clan badge. However, no way can a Scotsman or Irishman assume they belong to any certain clan just because of their name. They must do the family research. In continental countries frequently coats of arms were assumed. In Germany, for instance, if a man was a craftsman or tradesman he had his own made and put in front of his shop as a way of identifying it. The following is a link from the College of Arms that grants coats of arms of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. http://www.college-of-arms.gov.uk/Faq.htm Here is a link on how they are passed down. http://www.college-of-arms.gov.uk/About/12.htm When you go into someones home and see one of those walnut plaques with a coat of arms on it on their family room wall, over their fireplace etc just smile to yourself. Chances are they really think it belongs to them and it just isn't polite to laugh at people in their own homes about something like that.

a coat of arms is the legitimately awarded to an individual for services performed for or on behalf of a monarch. The crest is part of the Coat of Arms. There is no such thing as a Family" Coat of Arms. When Knighted the person was usually with lands, a title and wealth. The title could be passed to the eldest son and the Monarch could "take back" the title and crest (Henry VIII). There are commercial web sites that create crests, but they are not legitimate. The other thing is that a citizen of the US may not legally hold a title

Check out the two Wiki links below. They explain and show clearly that the crest is one small component of a coat of arms; it represents the crest that armoured knights used to wear on top of the helmet as additional identification. When a full coat of arms (the correct term is actually "an achievement of arms", but only heraldry geeks know that), is shown, the crest is always depicted on top of the helmet, which itself is always shown above the shield. These days the shield is usually shown upright, but in older art it's often shown on a slant with the helmet balancing on one corner - this represents the way a real shield and helmet would be hung on a wall when not in use. You can see a genuine medieval shield and helmet with crest hung up in this way in the third link. You can only have and use a crest if you have a coat of arms of which it is a part. The confusion between "crest" and "coat of arms" arose: (a) because people used to put their coat of arms on their belongings, which in a pre-literate society was a practical way of marking them. But unless the coat of arms was a very simple one indeed, it just wasn't practicable to engrave it on really small items; so the practice arose of using only the crest, sitting on the "torse" or wreath that in the whole arms covers the join of crest and helmet, on small things like coffee spoons and signet rings. So you quite often see crests being used on their own; and many people don't realise that here the crest is just a part representing the whole, and believe that a crest can exist independently. (b) And crests used in this way have themselves got confused with heraldic *badges*. Medieval lords mostly didn't give their followers uniforms - they would give them a badge to wear to show who they belonged to. It wouldn't be the whole coat of arms (only the lord himself wore that) but it usually was a component of it. These days hardly anybody has feudal followers except Scottish clan chiefs, and it is their chief's badge that clan members are entitled to wear and display - not his crest, and certainly not his coat of arms. So, to your problem: how do you find your coat of arms? Well, you must first realise that the chances are that you don't have one. Only a very small minority of people do. Coats of arms were only adopted by the upper tier of society - people with property and social standing. In the British Isles, only people of "gentry" status had them - in fact inheriting or being granted a coat of arms was explicitly a proof of this status. In some other countries (e.g. Germany) the habit of adopting arms reached down to people with a more modest standing but still people with property and importance in their community - e.g. merchants who owned their own business, farmers who owned their land. Working class people didn't have them, and the fact is that most of us are descended from working class people. However, if you want to try anyway, there is no short or cheap route: you have to research your ancestry back, in the direct legitimate male line, to someone who did have a legitimate coat of arms. Then present your research to the heraldic authority of that country, and ask them to verify your right to that coat of arms - or, more likely, a "differenced" version of it, if yours is not the senior line of the family. (In Western European heraldry only one person is ever entitled to use the basic coat of arms, and that is the current head of the family. Everybody else - his children, his younger brothers, members of "cadet" branches - can only use a version specially altered to show that they aren't the head of the family, and what their relation is to him.) The heraldic authority will make a charge for this; it could cost quite a lot of money. Good luck with this. Please don't get a tattoo of whatever you find on the internet claiming to be "your family's coat of arms": that's an expensive, painful and permanent way of making a fool of yourself.

There is no such thing as a family crest..........a crest is the top part of a Coat of Arms and a Coat of Arms belongs to and is the property of ONE person, not a family and certainly not someone who just happens to have the same surname...................if you personally have not been awarded Arms, if you personally have not inherited and been officially given permission to bear Arms then you do not have a Coat of Arms.............................. http://familytimeline.webs.com/coatofarmsmyths.htm