Getting a COA registered

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

I think you missed my point, but I can see where my comment could be seen as mean-spirited. I should clarify my position on this matter to some extent. I think people who live in countries with heraldic authorities should use them, whether they be granting authorities, official registries, or what have you. I don't think there is anything wrong with granted arms. There are plenty of good and valid reasons to seek a grant of arms from a foreign country, but among them is not that granted arms are real as opposed to assumed arms.

My position is actually very close to yours and Joe McMillan's; the difference being that I am of the opinion that those who live outside of the jurisdiction of a substantive granting authority are best served, legally (and possibly socially), by applying to them for a grant of arms, if they are in some way entitled to do so.

And here again, Scott, your example above is clearly misleading. In your analogy, you suggest that heraldry is sparkling wine and that granted arms are the equivalent of Champagne and that assumed arms are sparkling wines and even though they may be good sparkling wines in their own right, they are not Champagne and are therefor not, as you put it, "the genuine article."

The reason they are not the "genuine article", is that "real" champagne is defined by both law and custom (as is heraldry), and comes only from the Champagne region of France. That is the point I was hoping to make; Champagne from France, Heraldry from substantive offices of arms.

The problem with this argument is that heraldry is not sparkling wine, but simply wine.

Kenneth, I think it may be useful for me to define a couple of terms that I use, and which-- obviously-- are not-self evident from my posts. When I use the word "heraldry" I am coming down heavily on the side of the process of granting arms. To me, and probably to nobody else other than a few old codgers struggling into their tabards, the result of heraldry is "armoury", the actual design that appears on the shield along with any external additions (crest, supporters, etc.).

In your characterization that heraldry is sparkling wine, you have dismissed all the fine German wines and others from around the world that are the top of their classes, but which in no way purport to be Champagne.

That would be the case if I advocated only one heraldic authority as "valid", but I haven't done that. There are better than a dozen heraldic authorities in Europe, plus one in Canada and one more in the Republic of South Africa, and yet another in Antigua and Barbuda in the Caribbean. Each of these administers it's affairs according to it's own lights, with varying degrees of difficulty in obtaining a personal grant of arms (ranging from "easy" in the RSA to "impossible" in the Russian Federation), and each one is to be regarded as valid.

If tomorrow a new office of arms were to pop up in Mexico City, as a result of government initiative, it too would be regarded as "valid" by all of the other government-sponsored heraldic authorities.

And here, I think, is the crux of the problem.

As Mark Twain once said, "There are two kinds of people in the world; good people and bad people. The problem arises because it's the good people who decide who's who." It's the same in heraldry. The standards that are applied have nothing to do with the quality of armoury, and everything to do with the governmental standing of the office that created that armorial achievement. It may be unfair (and in my opinion it is) but that's how the system works.