A web of last names and coat of arms?

Question

Is there a web page where you can see the last names in alphabetical order and learn some history about the last names and the coat of arms.

Additional Details

Last name or surname

Answer 1

Best Answer - Chosen by Voters

Such websites are scams!!!

To begin with coats of arms do not belong to surnames and actually they don't belong to families, an exception might be Poland where they belong to dynastic families and maybe France.
Other than that they are inheritable property by individuals. They were/are granted to or assumed by an individual man and are inherited by his oldest son. In Britain when a man was granted one all sons obtained one with some differences. Only the oldest son inherits his father's upon his father's death.

Frequently more than one man with the absolute same surname, not all necessarily related, were each granted or assumed their own coat of arms, all different. No one peddler who sells them on the internet, at shopping malls, in airports, in magazines or solicit by mail will have all of them. They don't need to in order to sell. The only time they will have more than one coat of arms associated with the same surname is House of Names will if more than one man with the same surname from different national origins were granted or assumed one. Then they will have one of each and there might have been 50 others. Most men with that same surname are not entitled to a coat of arms at all as they have no direct male line ancestor that was ever granted a coat of arms.

Any time you go into someone's home and see one of those walnut plaques with a coat of arms on it on their den wall or over their fireplace, just smile to yourself. Very likely the people really believes it belongs to them and it would be rude to laugh at them in their own homes. A coat of arms that has been legitimately passed down from father to son will not be on a walnut plaque.

Not too long ago there was an ad running on TV for a company selling framed surname histories which is rather shady as not everyone with the same surname shares 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. Actually the purpose for them was for taxation purposes not to necessarily identify a man as a member of a family. Too man Freds, Joes, Henrys, Sams in the same town or village and they had to have a way of telling them apart. The man in the ad stated "a" coat of arms would be on it, not "your" coat of arms. You see on TV the FCC can crack a company hard with a great big fine for fraudulent advertising. The FCC has no control over the internet or some peddler in your local shopping mall or airport selling coats of arms like they belong to everyone with the same surname. Since the ad has stopped running it makes me wonder that maybe some genealogical organization didn't file a complaint against them for selling framed surname histories.

You might have more than one in your family tree. That doesn't mean you are entitled to any one of them. If just means that after doing research on your family history and you find more than one ancestor that were granted or assumed a coat of arms and if you have a book printed or even published on your family history, it is quite valid for you to put pictures of your ancestors'
coats of arms in your book. It wouldn't be valid however for you to put in your book those that just happened to be granted to or assumed by someone with the same surname as your ancestors.

If you are an American and you have any English lines that goes back to early colonial days in the American South, you have an excellent opportunity of finding several in your family tree. Actually in that case, you very likely will have some distant cousins you don't know that have the ones the ancestors you share in common with them brought over from England almost 400 years ago.
As a rule they don't display them. They aren't any good for buying groceries or gasoline. Walmart won't take them as a credit card and they won't help your 401k.

Answer 2

Don't kill the messenger... but here is the bad news. You are already off track. There are scam sites on the internet that will tell you there are surname family crests. The first tipoff that they are scams is that they use the word "crest," which is really just the design on top of the helmet (think of a bird's crest, like on a cardinal). What you are looking for is a coat of arms, not a crest. The second tipoff that they are scam sites is that they associate surnames with arms. Duh! There are hundreds of coats of arms owned by people named Smith, for example, but they sell only one. So they are selling you another person's coat of arms!!!!

I highly recommend you read this for more information:

http://www.heraldica.org/faqs/mfaq

So here is the deal. Find out where YOUR immigrant ancestor came from in the old country, when he was born, and in what city or village. Then contact a heraldry society and ask them to do a lookup. Or once you know where YOUR family came from, write someone there who has the last name. Most likely they are your distant cousin and can supply you the information you are looking for.

If you cannot find an ancestor who used a coat of arms, you can create a new design. The best thing to do is to sign up for free heraldic design assistance at the IAAH. They can design traditional arms for you based on your ideas, instead of quasi-heraldry by a tattoo artist or fake heraldry from a surname coat of arms peddler on the web or at the mall.

http://www.amateurheralds.org/