Heraldic Alphabet 2024

Welcome to my 2024 Heraldic Alphabet with coats of arms in the lgbt+ community, celebrating the annual International Heraldry Day

Continuing elements I introduced last year, two letters have double entries because there are more people whose names begin with those letters who have coats of arms. Also continued is a black background to the arms of people who died in the past 18 months.

Some nations (e.g. England) don’t let women display their arms on a shield, only ovals or lozenges. For the sake of visual uniformity I use shields throughout. To indicate which individuals would officially use a lozenge, I place a diamond around their letter in the illustrations.

I show just the shields and not the helmet, crest, motto, supporters, or insignia to which a person may also be entitled. Individuals are listed according to the name by which they are most popularly known. Aristocrats are listed under their title unless they are popularly known by another name.

Some Quick Basic definitions

Arms of Office – arms of an institution or office of which the person is the nominal head and who may use the arms of the institution (in performance of official duties only). I extend this practice to similar institutions of any nation.

Assumed – arms adopted by an individual or family in a country where no state heraldic authority exists, or are not registered by such an authority that does exist.

Attributed – arms assigned to an individual, whether historical or legendary, after that individual’s life time.

Cadency mark – a specific symbol added to a family coat of arms to indicate the place in order of birth of the individual (i.e. 1st son/daughter, 2nd son/daughter, etc.).

Family – arms officially borne by the family’s senior bloodline member. Other family members may be required to add cadency marks. Some nations allow all family members to use the arms unaltered.

Marital – In some countries spouses and same-sex couples can place their arms side by side on one shield. Spouses who are have no coat of arms can use those of their spouse’s or place a small blank shield (if male) or lozenge (in England if female) upon it.

Personal – Arms granted to an individual by an official heraldic authority. Also inherited family arms specific to the individual.

Quarters – 4 or more divisions of a shield showing 2 or more different coat of arms. Some individuals bear many quarters.

Without further ado, here is 2024’s Heraldic Alphabet:

A) St. AELRED of Rievaulx (1110-1167). Cistercian abbot, “patron saint” of male couples. Attributed arms of office. These are the arms of Rievaulx Abbey of which Aelred was abbot. They are first recorded in 1530. They are the arms of the Roos family, the abbey’s then patrons, surmounted by an abbot’s staff.

B) Jacques Gordat, 6th Marquess of BELBEUF (1850-1906). French aristocrat. Personal arms. The arms of the Gordat family. They depict spurs worn by medieval knights. His wife was the artist Mathilde de Morny (see D below). In France married couples display their arms on separate shields side by side rather than together on one shield.

C1) Marina CICOGNA (1934-2023). Italian film director (Countess Marina Cicogna Mozzoni Volpi di Misurata). Inherited family arms. Cicogna is Italian for “stork”, which the family adopted as their coat of arms. In heraldry a stork is often shown standing on one leg holding a rock in the other because legend says this is how storks sleep – if they drop the rock they wake up. In 1580 the Count Cicogna married the heiress of Count Mozzoni, bringing her arms of three eagles into the family.

C2) Margaret CUTHBERT (1887-1968). Pioneering Canadian/US media executive. Inherited family arms. The original Cuthbert arms was the serpent. Legend says that in 1411 an ancestor captured the battle standard of a Scottish Lord and the King granted him the right to add a bar across his shield. The flowers had been added by the time the Cuthberts moved to Canada in 1778, and were registered with the Court of Lord Lyon in Scotland by Hon. James Cuthbert (Margaret’s 2 times great-grandfather) on 24th January 1778. They were registered with the Canadian Heraldic Authority of the Governor General’s Office on 15 August 2012.

D) Mathilde DE MORNY (1863-1944). French artist. Inherited family arms. Mathilde’s father was an illegitimate half-brother of Emperor Napoleon III of France who created him a duke in 1863, granting him a border of dolphins (a French royal emblem) and eagles (a Bonaparte emblem). The black merlettes (birds with no beak or feet) are from the arms of the Duke’s father, the Count of Flahaut. Mathilde married the Marquess of Belbeuf (B above).

E) Miquel ENESENYAT RUITORT (b.1969), Mayor of Esporles, Majorca, 2005-15. Arms of office, being the arms of Esporles. They incorporate the red and yellow stripes common in Spanish (particularly Catalan) heraldry. On light blue are the cross keys and papal tiara of the Vatican.

F) St. FRANCIS of Assisi (c.1181-1226). Founder of the Franciscan Order of Friars. One of several attributed arms. The design symbolises Christ crucified with the five stigmata, the wounds he received on the cross. St. Francis is said to have borne temporary marks of the stigmata in 1224. Brown is the colour of the habit worn by Franciscans.

G) GIVENCHY (1927-2018). French fashion designer (Count Hubert Taffin de Givenchy). Inherited family arms. The Marquess de Givenchy is the title given to his ancestor in 1713. The family name is Taffin, and these are the family’s arms used since medieval times.

H) Juliet HARDINGE (1877-1970). Bisexual British actor, stage name of Mrs. Janette Thesiger (née Ranken). Marital arms, being those of her husband Ernest Thesiger (featured last year). She may have had a family coat of arms, but I have been unable to identify it, so I adopt the modern practice of placing a lozenge at the top of her husband’s shield.

J) Melvyn Gwynne JEREMIAH (1939-2023). British civil servant, Secretary of The Heraldry Society 2003-9. Personal arms granted by the College of Arms on 29 October 1994. The blue and white pattern is called vair - pieces of squirrel fur (“varus” is Latin for squirrel) sewn to form the lining of a medieval cloak (blue is back fur, white is belly fur). The Welsh dragon represents Melvyn’s nationality.

K) Mary KENDALL (1677-1710). Partner of Lady Caroline Jones (see 2023). Inherited family arms. The Kendall arms show 3 heraldic dolphins. In the other quarters are the arms of her mother, heiress of the Hallet family. Mary’s arms are shown on her memorial in Westminster Abbey.

L) Cam LYMAN (1932-c.1987). US transgender dog-breeder (whose murder is featured here). Assumed family arms. Assumed by descendants of the 17th century immigrant Richard Lyman, of which Cam was one. However, research in the 1950s proved that immigrant Richard Lyman was a different man to the one whose arms the family assumed and still use today. The 1st and 4th quarters are the Lyman arms, the 2nd quarter are the arms of Richard’s heiress wife Sarah Osbourne, the 3rd are the arms of his heiress ancestor Elizabeth Lambert. All recorded arms of the Osbornes have blue corners instead of red. I retain the colour assumed by the US Lymans.

M1 and M2) Barnaby MILN (b.1947). Magistrate, and member of the General Synod of the Church of England. In 2018 I did a full examination these coats of arms (see here). Basically, the blue arms were granted to an ancestor, and the green arms were granted to his father.

N) Florence NIGHTINGALE (1820-1910). Pioneer of nurse training, opponent of Votes for Women. As Florence features in many lgbt+ lists I’ve included her here, even though there’s no definitive evidence of her sexuality. Her father, William Shore, was heir to his grandmother’s family, the Nightingales. He adopted their name in 1815 and their arms shown here in 1874.

) Diego ORTIZ GONZALEZ (b.1982). Mayor of Pinto, Madrid, Spain, 2019-23. Arms of office, being those of the town of Pinto. The arms have been in use since before 1756 but were only officially registered on 17 September 2007. Red and yellow are the national colours of Spain. The dot on the map represents Pinto’s location at the exact centre of Spain.

P) Richard PARES (1902-1958). British historian. Inherited family arms. Richard descends from John Pares of Leicester (1635-1712) whose arms are the black and white design. The lion is the arms of the Lightbody family whose co-heiress married into the Pares family.

R) Eleanor RATHBONE (1872-1946). British politician and family rights campaigner. Inherited family arms. The arms were granted to Eleanor’s grandfather, William, by the College of Arms in 1841. The symbolism is unclear, though the fasces (bundle of sticks around an axe) is a Roman symbol of authority, and William was a magistrate.

S) Prince Janusz SANGUSZKO (1712-1775), Polish prince and bloodline heir to King Harold II of England. Inherited family arms. Basically, the arms of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania used since 1366, readopted by the republic of Lithuania in 1991. The Sanguszko family, like others who descend from the Grand Dukes, added the castle at some unknown date.

T) Hallam TENNYSON (1920-2005). BBC radio producer, murdered (unsolved). Inherited family arms. Hallam was great-grandson of the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson (who may or may not have been queer). This is a modified version of the arms of Archbishop Tenison of Canterbury (1636-1715) to whom the Tennysons may be related. In turn, the Archbishop’s arms were modified from those of Bishop Cantilupe of Hereford (d.1282). The laurel wreath was granted to Lord Tennyson by the College of Arms on 2 February 1883. The crescent signifies Hallam’s descent from Lord Tennyson’s 2nd son.

V1) Dries VAN NOTEN (b.1958). Belgian fashion designer. Personal arms granted by the Belgian Crown when he was created a baron in 2017. The nut tree alludes to his surname (Noten is Dutch for “nut”), as well as representing the Tree of Life. The two hands are taken from the arms of Antwerp, where Dries was born.

V2) Sarah VEATCH. Associate Professor of Biophysics, University of Michigan. Inherited family arms. Prof. Veatch is a distant cousin of Olympian Dan Veatch (see here). Both descend from the Veiches of Scotland. Although Sarah’s and Dan’s line of descent has been questioned by some, DNA has proven they and the Scottish Veiches are the same family.

W) Lana (b.1965) and Lilly (b.1967) WACHOWSKI. Transgender US film directors (“The Matrix” films). Inherited family arms. Their great-grandfather arrived in the US from Poland in 1905. The Wachowski family is one of many connected to the Szeliga “clan” and can use their arms. The design dates from the 1300s, being used by Archbishop Bodzanta of Gniezno, Governor of Krakow, in 1366.

Z) Brother Thomas ZERAFA (1951-2023). Franciscan friar. Inherited family arms. Brother Thomas’s father was born on Malta with an old and distinguished ancestry. The arms are probably of medieval origin.