Canting arms
Canting arms are heraldic bearings that represent the bearer's name (or, less often, some attribute or function) in a visual pun or rebus. The term cant came into the English language from Anglo-Norman cant, meaning song or singing, from Latin cantāre, and English cognates include canticle, chant, accent, incantation and recant.[2]
French heralds used the term Armes Parlantes ("Talking Arms"), as they would sound out the name of the armiger. Many armorial allusions require research for elucidation because of changes in language and dialect that have occurred over the past millennium.
Canting arms – some in the form of rebuses – are quite common in German civic heraldry. They have also been increasingly used in the 20th century among the British royal family. When the visual representation is not straightforward but as complex as a rebus, this is sometimes called a rebus coat of arms. An in-joke among Society for Creative Anachronism heralds is the pun, "Heralds don't pun; they cant."[3]
Examples of canting arms
Personal coat of arms
A famous example of canting arms are those of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (Queen Consort of the United Kingdom 1936-52 and Queen Mother 1952-2002). Her arms (pictured below) contain in sinister (i.e. on the bearer's left, viewer's right) the bows and blue lions that make up the arms of the Bowes and Lyon families.
Princess Beatrice of York: Beatrice = bee thrice = three bees
Quintin Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone: three hog's heads
De Barry family: three bars gemelles
Flag of Maryland, originally the arms of George Calvert, 1st Lord Baltimore, whose mother's maiden name was Crossland; the latter's arms shows a cross on land (the field).[4]
Municipal coat of arms
Municipal coats of arms which interpret the town's name in rebus form are also called canting. Here are a few examples.
Elmbridge, Surrey (1974): elm tree on bridge. (The toponym is related to bridges but not to elms; the prefix refers to Emel, a former name for the river Mole.[5]).svg.png)
Châteaurenard: Château = castle; Renard = fox
Eberbach (1976): Eber = boar; Bach = brook (wavy blue fess)
Freixo de Espada à Cinta (1926): Freixo = ash; de Espada = with sword; à Cinta = at the waist, in Portuguese
Falkenberg (1971): Falken = falcon; Berg = hill, in Swedish
Berlin (1954): Bär = bear
Torrevieja (1829): Torre = tower, vieja = old
Kryvyi Rih: Kryvyi = crooked, Rih = horn, in Ukrainian.svg.png)
Łódź: Łódź = boat
Notes
- ↑ "Tinctures".
- ↑ "Cant". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. ISBN 0-395-82517-2.
- ↑ Neznanich, Modar. "Heraldry for Those Who Cant" (PDF). Retrieved 2 July 2012. Cites 72 historical examples of canting arms, as well as SCA usage.
- ↑ Englefield, Eric (1979). Flags. Ward Lock. p. 104.
- ↑ Room, Adrian (1988). Dictionary Of Place Names In The British Isles. Bloomsbury. p. 128.
- ↑ Weeks, Andrew. "Obdam (The Netherlands)". Flags of the World. CRW Flags. Retrieved 16 September 2011.
- ↑ Schneider, Klaus-Michael. "Municipality of Manacor". Flags of the World. CRW Flags. Retrieved 16 October 2013.
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References
- "Meaning of Arms". Heraldica.org. 2001-06-20.
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