Intensive Purposes

Coat of Arms

Darth Illegitimus and I have been talking about my non-existant coat of arms. Well, just the motto, actually. Since I'm trying to squeeze some gaelic studying in when I get time, I thought it'd be cool to make up a motto in Scottish gaelic, and maybe someday use it on a coat of arms. After some thought, I decided to try translating "boot to the head". The tentative result is "mo bhrog e do cheann agad", or "my boot is at your head". I like it. I don't think it'd fly with the Lord Lyon, but I'm not too worried about that being an issue.

A side effect of this has been stumbling across some interesting websites dealing with heraldry. I'm not too savvy to the heraldric arts, so I find a lot of this fascinating. Did you know that there are at least four organizations in the United States who will register your arms, whether they be granted by a foreign authority (like the Lord Lyon or the Chief Herald of Ireland) or assumed arms that you designed yourself? At least two of them offer assistance with the design and rendering of your arms as well. There's also an American Heraldy Society, which focuses on education about heraldry instead of registration. The main aim of these groups seems to be introduction of legislature granting legal protections to people using arms in the States.

As a result of all of this, I'm considering trying to come up with an actual coat of arms. Why not? It's free to register (at one registry, anyway), and there are plenty of people out there who are willing to help out with the design. So, over the course of the next couple of weeks (or months, we'll see how long it takes me), as I come up with preliminary designs, you can expect to see them here. At least until my obsessive-compulsive disorder gives up on this one and I move on to something else.

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posted by Sir Phobos on 01 Mar 2006 at 07:56

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