How to Find Your Scottish Family Crest

Coat of arms.

Finding your family crest may be a little more difficult than typing your name into a family crest search and having an image pop up. The difficulty arises for two reasons: first, what comes up is unlikely to be your family's crest because crests were historically granted to individuals, according to ScotlandsPeople, an official United Kingdom website for historical Scottish records, not whole families. So unless you can prove direct descent from the person to whom the crest was granted, the crest is not yours. Second, there is some confusion between a family crest and a coat of arms. However, with some diligent and careful research, you may be able to discover your family crest.

Things You'll Need

• Computer with Internet access
• Fairbairn's Book of Crests of the Families of Great Britain and Ireland

Instructions

Finding Your Crest

1. Make a list of all possible spellings and abbreviations for both your surname and the first name that you wish to search records for. Bear in mind that the current spelling of your surname name may be different from your ancestors' or it may be anglicized. First names may be abbreviated or a database may use only an initial. Consider all the possibilities.

2. 

   To find a family crest, you will need to search death records as well as birth and marriage records.

   Search ScotlandsPeople's Coats of Arms database using the spelling and abbreviation possibilities you generated in step 1. Some genealogical information is available in the Coats of Arms database, but you may also need to search other records on the website as well, such as records of births, deaths, marriages, etc.

3. Look above the helmet on the coat of arms to find the crest. For an interpretation of crest symbols, see Fleur-de-lis Designs.

4. Investigate coats of arms in Fairbairn's Book of Crests of the Families of Great Britain and Ireland. First published in 1859, it has been updated as recently as 1993 and contains a register of all crests in Great Britain. Amazon.com calls is "the definitive book in its field."

Tips & Warnings

• Seek out additional help from The Association of Scottish Genealogists and Researchers in Archives if you aren't having any luck finding information about your ancestors on your own.

References

• crest
• ScotslandsPeople
• Fleur-de-lis Designs
• Fairbairn's Book of Crests of the Families of Great Britain and Ireland
• Amazon.com