Coat of arms with Scottish connection

[AJBryant]

Chas, I love you, man. You beat me to the punch.

[flairball]

My understanding is that here is the US arms don't mean anything, except to those who have them. Just hire an artist to create custom arms for you, hang them over he mantle, and enjoy.

[Harold Cannon]

The best place to look as far as heraldry in the United States is concerned, will probably be The American Heraldry Society.

[macwilkin]

My understanding is that here is the US arms don't mean anything, except to those who have them. Just hire an artist to create custom arms for you, hang them over he mantle, and enjoy.

Perhaps a better way to phrase this statement is that while there is no governmental body in the USA that grants arms, American citizens may assume their own to their liking.

T.

[David Thorpe]

My understanding is that here is the US arms don't mean anything, except to those who have them. Just hire an artist to create custom arms for you, hang them over he mantle, and enjoy.

I think it would depend on the context. I agree with you in that assuming arms in the US without being granted those arms by the Lyon Court does not make one a Scottish armiger.

[Joseph McMillan]

My understanding is that here is the US arms don't mean anything, except to those who have them. Just hire an artist to create custom arms for you, hang them over he mantle, and enjoy.

What arms mean in the US, whether inherited, granted, or assumed, is pretty much the same thing they mean everywhere else. They are a mark of personal and family identity that endures from one generation to another, and therefore imply that the person they belong to has a sense of his or her family as an enduring, organic community. As a French court said some years back, they are simplement des marques de reconnaissance accessoires du nom de famille auquel elles se rattachent indissolublement, que cette famille soit noble ou non ("simply marks of identification accessory to the name of the family, to which they are indissolubly attached, whether that family is noble or not").

Any meaning beyond that is purely in the eye of the beholder.

If the recipient of an English or Scottish grant feels that his arms solidify the bonds he feels with the country of his ancestors, that's great. If he belongs to an organization that allows display of arms within the context of the club only if they are granted by royally-constituted authority, fine with me, too. And anyone who feels, like a Canadian friend of mine, that the grant of arms establishes a mystical personal relationship between himself and her majesty the queen--well, I have to admit the idea reminds me of the TV commercial where the guy insists that he and Michael Jordan are just alike because they wear the same brand of undershirt--but whatever floats your boat.

If the recipient of an English or Scottish grant believes that his arms somehow validate his gentility or nobility in any meaningful sense, then I'm afraid he's fallen prey to four centuries of accumulated propaganda. In reality, the most it means that he has no criminal record and the international bank draft cleared. But if it helps him with any status insecurity, I guess that's okay, too, although as another friend who descends from a very old and notable Scottish family once told me, needing a grant of arms to prove you're a gentleman (in the restricted, historical sense) in fact proves that you're not. If you were, you'd have inherited your arms.

Ultimately, in legal terms, all that an English or Scottish grant does is (1) give the grantee exclusive rights in England or Scotland, as the case may be, to the arms granted, and (2) keep him on the right side of the Scottish statute that forbids bearing arms not granted or matriculated by Lord Lyon. Neither of which has the least significance once the arms cross the high-tide mark.

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

Isn't the lion rampant in Lord Sunderlin's arms Argent?

My copy of his arms (dated 1816) depict the lion as or.