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Finding Your Family Crest

January 28, 2011 By

Family crests, otherwise known as a Coat of Arms, are badges that were given in honour of bravery or heroism. This was offered to all men, whether paupers or princes and is still looked on by many with pride and a sense of family belonging.

As the Coat of Arms, or family crest, was an honour to hold not all family names will have a crest related to it. If you want to find whether you have one, the first thing you need to do is find your unaltered family surname. Over the years, surnames get altered, whether it is to fit in with society, especially relevant to Jewish families around the 1940s era, or to enable it to be pronounced correctly, relevant to the immigrant families that have come to England seeking work over the decades.
Once you have found your original surname, then a simple search on websites such as www.allfamilycrests.com or www.houseofnames.com will locate your family crest if you have one.

Family Crests can be used on any item; many people use them as decorative wall hangings, or on family silver. The coat of arms on silver from times gone by would be an indication to ownership, and a measure of success within the family. They are commonly used nowadays more so in corporate identification and military regimental recognition.
The art of Heraldry is the profession of devising, granting and displaying family crests. The need for heraldry came about in the military sense when suits of armour were worn, including large head coverings and it was required to distinguish which side was which. This was done by emblazoning the coat of arms on the headdress or on flags carried by the army.
Modern Heraldry focuses on the traditional coat of arms, which customarily has a shield in the centre, a supporter either side (commonly a lion or other strong beast) a helm on top of the shield and a crest on top of the helm. There is usually a motto in a scroll underneath the shield. Supporters on a crest are normally reserved for peers of the realm, knighthoods and some corporate organisations.

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What Methods Can Be Used To Research Your Family History?

January 26, 2011 By

When we sit down to watch ‘Who do you think you are’ on television it is astounding at how far the team of researchers are able to trace the celebrities family tree back. I often sit there and wonder what gems my family would hold if I was able to do that.
With swathes of TV researchers and an endless budget it is made to look so easy whilst they employ various methods of family research.
Luckily with the invention of the internet, methods of family research have become much easier for those of us who do not have access to TV budgets.
The first method of family research is to ask your relatives. It can be amazing how much knowledge is passed on from older generations in the form of stories or snippets of memories. This can be the best way to find out towns where people lived, maiden names of maternal grandparents, and when people died.
Armed with this information, the next family research method would be to consult with Birth, Death and Marriage records. Records of these events started in England and Wales in the mid 1800s so it would be possible to trace back nearly 2 centuries using this method of family research. These are now mostly transcribed for search on the internet, or it could be possible to visit your local registrar who would have access to the local records.
If your family has been in the same parish for many generations, a visit to the local cemetery would be another useful method of family research. This would give exact dates of birth and death and maybe throw up relatives that you didn’t know about.
Once you have used these methods then visiting the census records is another great family research method. Although only done once every 10 years, the census gives all the full names and ages of the people in the household, along with their occupations, therefore giving you more insight than the birth or death certificates could.
There are also military records and emigration records that can be searched via the internet or through archives, which may fill some gaps especially around war time.
Whilst sitting at a computer researching the internet may not be as glamorous as the TV show, it will certainly be just as rewarding.

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Where Does Your Family Name/Surname Originate

January 13, 2011 By

Just think, how confusing it would be if everyone was called Fred? Many years ago, before the world’s population was out of control, people were only known by one name. As there were such few people, this was not too much of an issue.

However when people started to multiple, only having one name started to cause problems. Imagine having to find Jane the child-minder amongst Jane the seamstress and Jane the nurse. This caused problems not only for local folk but also the tax collector, how did he know he had the right one. So by Royal Decree it was announced that people had to give themselves a surname, otherwise known as a family name.

The English took this decree and made it simple, if the man of the house was John, the family name, or surname, would be Johnson. Understanding this makes it easy to see where surnames like Williamson, Stevenson, and Davidson came from.
Scotland did the same, except replacing –son with Mac or Mc. This leaves us with the origins of surnames such as MacDonald, son of Donald, and MacGregor, son of Gregor.
Another easy way that families came up with their family name was to use the occupation of the man of the house. This would explain the origins of the surnames like Baker and Butcher, which makes obvious sense when trying to identify yourself within a community, John the Baker (John Baker) or Harry the Butcher (Harry Butcher). Where this becomes obscure in modern day is if the occupation is now no longer common. For example, the surname Abbott is likely to have originated from abbotts, leaders of religious communities based in an abbey.

Another, and less common, way of finding a surname was to take a family characteristic and use that to find a surname. For example Brown could have been from someone with brown hair, Short could have come from a family who were uncharacteristically short and so on.

Other countries followed suit and used the same way of thinking, northern European countries used
-sen as we did –son and Spain used –ez at the end of the name to create a family name.

With a little bit of thought it could be possible to recognize the origin of many of today’s common surnames.

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