Whats my coat of arms or family crest?

*All* sites promising to find "your coat of arms/crest" are fakes. Anybody here who sends you a link or email about "your coat of arms" is also a fake. The only way to find out whether you are entitled to a coat of arms (and the odds are that you aren't) is to research your ancestry until you find someone who was granted one, and prove that you are the senior legitimate male descendant of that person. If you can't do that, you have no coat of arms.

The surname product business is a scam. There has been an ad running now and then on TV for a company selling framed surname histories which is somewhat shady as not everyone with the same surname will have the same family history. When surnames were assigned or 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 surname with others with no known relationship. The man in the ad states "a" coat of arms will be on it, not "your" coat of arms. You see on TV the FCC can slap a company hard for fraudulent advertising. The FCC has no control over the internet or some merchant in an airport or your local shopping mall. In British countries they are granted by a specific heraldry authority. In continental countries they are assumed by individuals. Actually there is no such thing as a family crest. A crest is part of a coat of arms. Coats of arms usually belong to individuals only not families. The term family crest no doubt came into being when a man was granted or he assumed or inherited a coat of arms, he frequently put the crest portion of his coat of arms on the family's silver and napkins. Still in the long run the coat of arms was his not his family's. Frequently more than one man with the same surname, not all necessarily related, were each granted their own coat of arms, all different. No one peddler who sells them will have all of them. They don't need to in order to sell to suckers. The only time they will have more than one associated with the same surname is if more than one man with the same surname from different national origins were granted a coat of arms. Then they will have one of each and there might have been 50 others. Still most men with that same surname are not entitled to a coat of arms at all as they do not have any direct male line descendant that was ever granted or assumed a coat of arms. In the U.S. we have no laws regarding heraldry and a person is free to display any coat of arms they wish, but to do so without documented proof that they are entitled to it is considered usurpation of another's identity. A person with pride in themselves will not want to take on another's identity. Whenever you go into someone's home and see one of those walnut plaques with a coat of arms mounted on it over their fireplace or on their den wall, just smile to yourself. Very likely they really think it belongs to them and it would be rude to laugh at people in their own homes about things like that. In England when a man was/is granted a coat of arms all sons obtained one with some differences called cadence marks. Only the oldest son inherits his father's upon his father's death. In Scotland a person can have criminal charges filed against them for displaying a coat of arms without documented proof that it belongs to them. This is what Ancestry.Com states about the name Winters English and German: patronymic from Winter. Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4 If your Winters is German, we have had one poster on this board states you have a good chance of having an ancestor that assumed a coat of arms. She stated a man who was a craftsman or tradesman usually had his own designed and made as a way to identify his business. However, you would have to trace your ancestry back to the the man that assumed one.

There's no such thing as a coat of arms or family crest for a certain last name (surname). Anyone who is trying to sell you them is trying to make a quick buck of you...When people used to adopt family crests in the past, it would not be uncommon for brothers to have different family crests. There is no set rule or anything like that...If you research your genealogy and you find out that your great great great great great Paul Winters was an aristocratic noble in Manchester, England, there is a place where you can go to see IF he adopted a family crest...If you find the family crest that he "claimed" back in his time and YOU can prove that you are a direct descendant of the man, then that would be YOUR family crest. Different countries had different regulations for family crests and coats of arms, but I would consider an ancestor's family crest my own if I was able to locate one.

there is NO such thing as a family coat of arms - if the House of Names tells you there is - then the House of Names is a LIAR you can only have a family coat of arms of a direct ancestor of yours (and you have proof of direct descent) was granted a crest and coat of arms - Apprently and you can only claim an ancestors coat of arms if you are direct MALE descent - with no female interruption. there can be 5 coats of arms granted to 5 members of the same family and their (male) ancestors can only claim the arms that belongs to their direct ancestor.

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