Heraldry grew up as a shared European language in the Middle Ages, but every country wrote its own rules about who could bear arms, who granted them and what they looked like. England, Scotland and Ireland have official heralds; Switzerland and the Netherlands have long let ordinary families adopt arms freely; Italy stopped recognising noble titles under its 1948 Constitution. This guide summarizes eight traditions and links to our dedicated pages on the others.
Countries with their own guides
We cover the largest traditions in depth on separate pages:
- Ireland: Irish family crests and the Chief Herald
- England: English and British heraldry
- Scotland: clan crests, chiefs and the Lord Lyon
- Germany: German surnames and coats of arms
- France: French heraldry
- Russia and the Slavic lands
One principle holds almost everywhere: arms belonged to particular people or particular family lines, never automatically to everyone who shared a surname. Our guide to what a family coat of arms really is explains why.
Italy
According to John Woodward’s Treatise on Heraldry, British and Foreign (1892), hereditary arms appeared in Italy, as in Spain, from about the beginning of the thirteenth century. Italian city politics left a distinctive mark on them. During the long struggle between the Guelph and Ghibelline factions, Woodward writes, Ghibelline families “frequently assumed, without any special Imperial grant, a chief of the Empire,” a gold band across the top of the shield carrying a black eagle. Guelph families, Woodward adds, did so “with still greater frequency,” using a chief derived from the arms of the house of Anjou: blue, with a red label and gold fleurs-de-lis. Woodward calls it the rastrello “which meets our eyes at every turn in Florence, Bologna, and other cities of Italy.” A chief like this tells you about a family’s loyalties, not its surname.
After unification, a royal decree of 10 October 1869 created the Consulta Araldica to advise the Kingdom’s government on noble titles and coats of arms. The Republic ended that system. The Constitution’s transitional provisions state that “titles of nobility shall not be recognised,” although place-names included in titles that existed before 28 October 1922 count as part of the name. Italian arms today are a matter of history and private use rather than state regulation.
Spain and Portugal
Iberian heraldry is easy to recognize. Woodward notes that in Spain the shield “assumed a distinctly rounded shape in the base, which has been retained in the Peninsula to the present day.” Words often appear inside the arms: “Many Spanish families bear their motto in a bordure around the shield, and sometimes introduce it into the shield itself.” His example is the shield of the Mendoza, Dukes of the Infantado, which carries the words AVE MARIA and GRATIA PLENA.
The bordure, a border around the edge of the shield, does unusual work in the Peninsula. English-style marks of cadency for younger sons were almost unknown there, Woodward explains, but the bordure was “very largely employed,” especially to show descent from a maternal ancestor. The familiar example is the royal arms of Portugal, set within a bordure of Castile.
Portugal also has one of Europe’s great armorials: the Livro do Armeiro-Mor, compiled in 1509 by the King of Arms João do Cró. It is the oldest surviving Portuguese armorial and is kept today at the Torre do Tombo, Portugal’s national archive in Lisbon.
The Netherlands and Belgium
The Low Countries have a long tradition of arms used by families outside the nobility. In the Netherlands, the Hoge Raad van Adel (High Council of Nobility), established in 1814, is the government’s standing advisory body on nobility and heraldry. It advises on the arms of the state, provinces, municipalities and water boards, and on those of the royal house, and it also answers genealogical and heraldic questions from the public. It does not regulate private family arms. As the Frisian heraldic council’s registration rules put it, in the Netherlands everyone is free to bear a family coat of arms or to have one designed. Families who want a record of their arms use voluntary registers.
In Belgium, heraldry for private people is handled by the language communities. Under a decree of 12 May 2004, the French-speaking Community allows individuals and family associations to register their arms officially, with advice from its Council of Heraldry and Vexillology, and so secure an exclusive right to them. The Flemish Community has its own heraldic council and procedure. If your ancestors came from Belgium, find out first which language region they lived in.
Switzerland
Switzerland may be the most heraldry-minded country in Europe. The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland records that “freedom of arms” always prevailed in the old Confederation, and that burghers and peasants were adopting arms as early as the late Middle Ages, often choosing house marks, craft symbols or everyday objects as their charges. The oldest collection of Swiss burgher arms is considered to be the little armorial of the bakers’ guild of Lucerne, dated 1408. Earlier still, the Zurich Roll of Arms of about 1340 holds 559 coats of arms on a parchment strip some four meters long.
Towns and villages took part too. By 1939, every Swiss municipality was represented by its own arms at the national exhibition in Zurich. Family arms remain common: the president of the Fribourg institute of heraldry and genealogy told Swissinfo in 2024 that 80 to 90 percent of families from that canton have one. No authority grants arms in Switzerland. Families can register them in armorials kept mostly by cantonal, town and municipal archives, but the City of Geneva describes such arms as “a personal mark with no official value.”
Scandinavia
Woodward reports that the earliest known Swedish armorial shield dates from 1219. Sweden’s nobility was organized in 1625, when King Gustav II Adolf founded the Riddarhuset, the House of Nobility, and the noble families of the day were “introduced,” or entered as members. Its great hall in Stockholm is lined with the arms of the introduced families, painted on copper plates. The institution lost its special public status in 2003. Finland, separated from Sweden in 1809, founded its own House of Nobility on the Swedish model in 1818.
Norway went the other way. Its parliament, the Storting, voted to abolish the nobility in 1816, 1818 and 1821; the King vetoed the first two bills but sanctioned the third, and the Nobility Law of 1821 ended hereditary noble status, with existing nobles keeping their rank only for their lifetimes. For family historians, the lesson across Scandinavia is the same: noble arms are well recorded, so if a family claims noble descent, the registers should show it.
Hungary
In the Kingdom of Hungary, a royal grant of arms, called a címereslevél, often came with a grant of nobility. Nobles who held their status by such a grant were known as armalista. The grants are formal charters on parchment, usually in Latin, with the arms painted on the document itself. Their texts were largely standardized, so that, as a 2022 edition of one county’s grants notes, they are often practically identical apart from the names, the blazon and the date.
Many survive. The National Archives of Hungary holds a large collection of original grants, which has been digitized, and modern editions publish the texts of grants issued under the Hunyadis, John Hunyadi and his son King Matthias, between 1447 and 1489. Hungarian arms also bear the marks of their history: Woodward notes that the long wars with the Ottomans brought the image of a defeated Turk’s head into several Hungarian and Transylvanian coats of arms. If your family claims Hungarian noble arms, the original charter, or a record of it, is the evidence to look for.
Wales
Wales has never had a separate heraldic authority; arms for Wales are granted by the College of Arms in London. Welsh heraldry nonetheless has its own character. Early Welsh rulers bore no coats of arms, but later heralds attributed arms to them and to the founders of great lineages, and their many descendants bore those arms in turn, so that, unlike in England, many Welsh families shared the same coat. The four lions associated with Llywelyn the Great and Llywelyn the Last date from the thirteenth century.
Welsh poets and genealogists kept the pedigrees. Lewys Dwnn (about 1550 to about 1616), also known as Lewys ap Rhys ab Owain, was appointed in 1585 as deputy to two English Kings of Arms for Wales and the Marches, and went on collecting pedigrees until 1614. His second name is a reminder that Welsh naming long followed the patronymic pattern, with ap meaning “son of.” The office of Wales Herald Extraordinary was re-created by Royal Warrant in 1963 for Major Francis Jones, and continues today.
Jewish heraldic traditions
Jewish heraldry is a story of emblems before it is a story of grants. The Encyclopaedia Judaica notes that Jews used emblems extensively on seals, some resembling coats of arms, such as the medieval seal of Kalonymus ben Todros of Narbonne, which shows a lion rampant on a shield. Italian Jewish families adopted family badges that appeared on seals, marriage contracts, tombstones and personal possessions, and some later became the basis of formal arms. The first Jew to receive a grant, according to the same source, was made a knight of the Holy Roman Empire in 1622.
In the nineteenth century, grants became more common. Moses Montefiore’s arms of 1819 were based on a family badge embroidered on an Ark curtain given to the Levantine synagogue at Ancona in 1635, and in 1831 he received “the word Jerusalem in Hebrew characters of gold” as an augmentation. The Rothschild brothers were ennobled by the Austrian emperor in 1816; their 1817 arms showed an arm holding four arrows, and Nathan Rothschild in London received an English grant in 1818 with a lion grasping five. Some Anglo-Jewish arms, such as those of the Mocatta and Belilios families, include a seven-branched candlestick.
The traditions at a glance
| Country or tradition | Who handles arms today | A key fact |
|---|---|---|
| Italy | No state recognition of titles | Consulta Araldica created 1869; Guelph and Ghibelline chiefs |
| Spain and Portugal | Varies; historic armorials and archives | Mottos in bordures; Livro do Armeiro-Mor, 1509 |
| Netherlands | Hoge Raad van Adel for public bodies and nobility | Families free to adopt arms |
| Belgium | Language communities | Official registration for individuals since 2004 (French-speaking Community) |
| Switzerland | No granting authority | Burgher arms since the late Middle Ages |
| Sweden, Finland, Norway | Houses of Nobility (Sweden, Finland); nobility abolished in Norway | Riddarhuset founded 1625 |
| Hungary | Historic grants in archives | Grants of arms often conferred nobility |
| Wales | College of Arms | Wales Herald Extraordinary re-created 1963 |
How to research arms from these countries
- Find your family’s place first. Heraldry is local. Before looking for arms, trace your ancestors to a specific town or region and period; our guide on how to trace your surname’s origin shows how.
- Use the right archive. National and regional archives in Lisbon, The Hague, Budapest, Stockholm and the Swiss cantons hold the original records described above.
- Check the classic armorials, but treat them as leads. Woodward’s treatise and the large continental armorials list arms by family name and place, often with several different families under one surname.
- Read the arms correctly. A chief of the Empire or a Spanish bordure carries meaning of its own; see how to read a coat of arms, our guide to heraldic symbols and our article on family mottos.
- Confirm the connection. Arms recorded for your surname may belong to another family of the same name. Our guide on how to verify a coat of arms explains how to check.
See the arms recorded for your surname →
Sources
- John Woodward and George Burnett, A Treatise on Heraldry, British and Foreign (Edinburgh and London, 1892), vols. 1 and 2, Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/treatiseonherald00wooduoft and https://archive.org/details/treatiseonherald02wooduoft
- Constitution of the Italian Republic, Transitional and Final Provisions, XIV (English translation), Constitute Project: https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Italy_2020?lang=en
- Hoge Raad van Adel (High Council of Nobility, the Netherlands): https://www.hogeraadvanadel.nl/
- Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (Historical Dictionary of Switzerland), “Wappen”: https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/012809/2014-12-27/
- Olivier Pauchard, “Switzerland, the promised land of coats of arms,” SWI swissinfo.ch (December 14, 2024): https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss-oddities/switzerland-the-promised-land-of-coats-of-arms/88569512
- Store norske leksikon, “Riddarhuset”: https://snl.no/Riddarhuset
- David Redvaldsen, “‘A Mere Ribbon of Silk’: The Abolition of the Norwegian Nobility, 1814–1824,” Scandinavica (2015): https://www.scandinavica.net/api/v1/articles/13804-a-mere-ribbon-of-silk-the-abolition-of-the-norwegian-nobility-1814-1824.pdf
- Anton Avar, ed., A Hunyadiak címereslevelei 1447–1489 (Budapest, 2018), Hungaricana: https://library.hungaricana.hu/en/view/MolDigiLib_VSK_AHunyadiakCimereslevelei/
- Dictionary of Welsh Biography, “Dwnn, Lewys (c. 1550 – c. 1616)”: https://biography.wales/article/s-DWNN-LEW-1550
- Encyclopaedia Judaica, “Heraldry,” via the Jewish Virtual Library: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/heraldry
Frequently asked questions
Is there one set of heraldic rules for all of Europe?
No. The basic language of shields, colors and charges is shared, but each country developed its own rules about who could bear arms, who granted them and how they were displayed. Some countries still have official heralds, while others, such as Switzerland and the Netherlands, have long left family arms to the families themselves.
Do Italian families still have official coats of arms?
Not in the sense of state recognition. The Kingdom of Italy’s heraldic body, the Consulta Araldica, was created in 1869, but the Constitution of the Italian Republic states that titles of nobility are not recognised. Historic Italian arms survive in archives, books and buildings and can still be studied and used privately.
Could ordinary families have coats of arms in Europe, or only nobles?
In many places, ordinary families could. Swiss burghers and peasants adopted arms in the late Middle Ages, and the oldest collection of Swiss burgher arms dates from 1408. In the Netherlands anyone is free to bear a family coat of arms today, while in Hungary a grant of arms often came with a grant of nobility.
Did Jewish families have coats of arms?
Some did. Jewish seals with arms-like emblems are known from the Middle Ages, and in the modern period families such as the Montefiores and Rothschilds received formal grants. The Encyclopaedia Judaica notes that the English College of Arms raised no difficulty about granting or registering arms for Jews born or naturalized in England.
Do Welsh families have their own heraldic authority?
No. Arms for Wales are granted by the College of Arms in London, which serves England and Wales. The office of Wales Herald Extraordinary was re-created in 1963 as a royal herald, and Welsh heraldry has its own traditions, including arms attributed to early rulers and shared by their many descendants.
How do I research arms from a European country?
First trace your own family back to a specific town and period, then look in that country’s archives and its classic armorials. Remember that, everywhere in Europe, arms belonged to particular people or family lines, so arms recorded for your surname may belong to a different family of the same name.