Re: [MR] Heralds don't make puns...

["Ed Hopkins" <Ed.Hopkins@MCI.Com>]

Poster: "Ed Hopkins" <Ed.Hopkins@MCI.Com>

Earlier, I said:

> William Shakespeare (1564-1623) had these arms:
> 
> Or, on a bend sable a spear of the first, pointed argent.

I should also have added:

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616):

   Azure, two stags or within a bordure gules
   charged with saltires couped or.

(The Latin word for "stag" is "cervus".)

Julien noted:
> I believe canting is used mainly when the surname is
> passed down: canting if her son would be known as James
> Goatherd, allusive if it refers to her profession and
> not her family name.

Theoretically, almost everyone who now has the surname
"Goatherd" (oddly, not nearly as common as "Shepherd") had
an ancestor who actually was a goatherd at the time surnames
started to be hereditary.

OTOH, most of the people who bore arms in the Period
had boringly similar occupations: landlord and man-at-arms.
(I'm not saying those aren't interesting jobs; I'm just
saying there wasn't a lot of variety).

Here's a somewhat out-of-Period example of allusive arms,
granted to Elton John in 1986:

   Per saltire gules and or, in fess two pellets pierced and 
   in pale as many plates also pierced, on a chief argent
   issuant in chief seven pallets retrait two three and two
   sable.

-- Alfredo

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