The Grammar of Heraldry: Cadency, Identity, and Inheritance
Cadency, Differencing, and the Myth of the “Family Surname Coat of Arms”
One of the most persistent myths about heraldry is the idea that coats of arms belong to surnames. Type a last name into a search engine, and you’ll find colorful shields confidently labeled “The Smith Family Coat of Arms.” It’s tidy. It’s convenient. It’s also historically wrong.
Heraldry has never functioned that way.
To understand why, we need to talk about cadency and differencing—the quiet grammar of heraldry that governs identity, inheritance, and individuality.
Arms Are Granted to People, Not Names
Historically, coats of arms were granted to individuals, not families in the modern sense, and certainly not to surnames as abstract categories. An armiger (the person entitled to bear arms) received a specific design as a mark of personal identity—much like a seal, signature, or banner on the battlefield.
While arms could be inherited, they were inherited through lineage, not by simply sharing a last name.
This distinction matters.
Two unrelated people named “Taylor” in medieval England were no more entitled to each other’s arms than two strangers sharing a birthday. Surnames arose for many reasons—occupation, location, patronymics—and were never exclusive enough to function as heraldic ownership markers.
Cadency: How Heraldry Handles Inheritance
As arms passed from one generation to the next, heraldry developed a system called cadency to distinguish family members from one another.
Cadency marks (also called brisures) are small symbols added to a coat of arms to indicate birth order within a family:
- The eldest son traditionally bore a label
- The second son, a crescent
- The third son, a mullet
And so on
These marks ensured that each armiger had a distinct set of arms, even while visually acknowledging shared lineage. The system prevented confusion in legal matters, warfare, inheritance, and record-keeping—where mistaking one person for another could be disastrous.
In other words: heraldry values precision.
Differencing Is About Identity, Not Decoration
Beyond cadency, heraldry also uses differencing more broadly. This can include:
- Changes in tincture (color)
- Alterations to charges (symbols)
- Added bordures, chiefs, or secondary elements
Differencing allowed heraldry to grow organically as families expanded, branched, married, and migrated. Arms evolved—but always with intention, structure, and traceable meaning.
This is why you can’t simply “look up” your arms by surname. Even within a single noble house, arms might vary subtly—or dramatically—over generations.
Why Surname Generators Get It Wrong
Most online “family crest” generators commit the same fundamental error: they flatten heraldry into branding.
They take one historical armiger, ignore cadency, ignore lineage, ignore jurisdiction, and then assign that person’s arms wholesale to everyone with the same last name. It’s the heraldic equivalent of finding an old signet ring and declaring yourself its rightful owner because you like the engraving.
Historically speaking, that’s not how arms work—and never has been.
So What Is the Right Way?
Authentic heraldry begins with one of two paths:
- Proving descent from a known armiger and determining the correct differenced arms you are entitled to bear
- Creating or being granted new arms, designed specifically for you—your life, values, profession, and legacy
Both paths honor the original purpose of heraldry: clear identity, continuity, and meaning across time.
Heraldry as Living Language
Heraldry is not a novelty or a decorative trend. It is a visual language with rules, history, and nuance—a language that values who you are over what name you happen to share with others.
When practiced properly, it doesn’t erase individuality.
It preserves it.
And that, perhaps, is why heraldry has endured for nearly a thousand years—long after surname generators came and went.
Heraldry endures because it refuses shortcuts:
it recognizes individuals, not abstractions,
and lineage, not convenience.