Where we get our Information
I have been consultant for the Historical Research Center since 1991. HRC was founded in the US in 1988, but prior to that research for their database was started in Ireland and England a world renowned center for records and information on onomastics ( the study of origins and forms of proper names ) and heraldry.
In 2021 the owner and founder Michael Walshe passed away from Parkinson’s. The company has been sold to My Lineage out of San Diago Ca. by a former dealer for HRC.
All of the Coats of Arms we offer, as well as the information in the Family Name Histories, are true and correct, based on the ancient archives. We have the largest library of its kind in the world. For over 35 years, our researchers have used that library to research all of the Coats of Arms and Name Histories that we have available.
As far as being the “correct” Arms, people often mean “did those Arms belong to my genetic ancestor?” The great majority of us will never know, unless we have done our own personal family lineage tracing and found records of direct ancestors back to medieval Europe. We don’t claim that the Arms we offer for a name were given to our customer’s ancestor, but that the Arms we offer are documented as being correct for that name and country.
Many people are curious when they find different Coats of Arms for a name. One reason for more than one Coat of Arms for a name is that two unrelated families with the same name would have been granted different Arms.
For example, a man named Clark (which means ‘clerk’) in Shropshire would have a specific Coat of Arms. A man named Clark in York (and not related to the Shropshire Clarks) would have been given different Arms. That’s how people could distinguish between the different Clark families. The name Clark, for example, has 121 authentic Coats of Arms recorded from England.
In our archive, as a name origin project, we try to find the oldest, or first recorded, Coat of Arms for each specific name available.
We pride ourselves in offering products and a service that can help perpetuate the desire to gather information about the history of a family name, origin intriguing details and if the name has a Blazon of Arms describing heraldic markings and design.
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