Coat of Arms Generator — Design a Heraldic Shield & Blazon

What a coat of arms actually is

A coat of arms is a personal mark of identity that developed on the medieval battlefield and then in tournaments, where a knight had to be recognisable inside a closed helmet. It is a design with a grammar: a shield, a small set of named colours, a small set of named shapes, and a written description that fixes the design in words. Because the description is the real thing, two heralds in different countries can redraw the same arms and get the same result without ever seeing each other's drawing.

That is also why arms are not a logo and not a surname badge. A grant of arms is made to one person, and it descends to that person's descendants; it is not attached to a family name, and it is not a decoration you inherit by sharing a surname with someone famous. Everything this page produces is a design built from the same vocabulary, drawn in your browser, with an honest label on it: it is your design, not a grant.

How to use this tool

Work in whichever direction suits you. If you think in pictures, pick a field tincture on the left, then a division, an ordinary and a charge, and the shield on the right redraws as you go. If you think in words, type a blazon into the text box below the shield — for example Azure, a fess Or, three crescents Argent — and the controls, the shield and the SVG all follow. The two directions stay in sync: every change on the left rewrites the blazon, and every blazon you type moves the controls.

When the arms look right, copy the SVG and drop it into a page or an image editor, download a 1000×1200 PNG, or copy the blazon text and keep that instead. The blazon is the smallest and most durable export: it is one line of plain text, and it is the one form that survives a change of drawing tool. The link button packs the same blazon into the address, so you can hand the exact arms to someone else.

Reading a blazon

A blazon is read from the field outward. The field comes first, then the principal ordinary or charge, then everything else, separated by commas, and the description ends with a full stop. Positions are never given as left and right: heraldry says dexter for the bearer's right, which is your left as you look at the shield, and sinister for the other side. Colours are named in the old French vocabulary, so gold is Or, silver or white is Argent, red is Gules, blue is Azure, black is Sable, green is Vert and purple is Purpure.

This tool speaks the same order, which makes its output easy to check. Azure, on a chief Or three mullets Gules means a blue field, a gold band across the top, and three red stars standing on that band. Per pale Azure and Gules, a crescent Argent means the field is split down the middle into blue and red, with one white crescent over it. Single charges are blazoned a mullet, pairs and trios as two mullets and three mullets, and when a charge sits on an ordinary the words on a introduce it.

The tinctures, and the rule of tincture

Seven tinctures are drawn here: two metals, Or and Argent, and five colours, Gules, Azure, Sable, Vert and Purpure. Heraldry also uses furs such as ermine and vair, which need a patterned fill and are not part of this tool. The rule of tincture says that a metal may not be laid on a metal and a colour may not be laid on a colour. It exists for a practical reason rather than a decorative one: arms had to be identifiable at a distance, in rain, through a visor, and two similar tones next to each other turn into a smudge.

The tool checks the rule on every change and warns you in the panel above when a pair clashes, naming the two tinctures it objects to. It warns rather than blocks, because the rule has well-known exceptions and because a design you like is a better design than one an algorithm approves of. The stainless trick, if you want to satisfy it, is to alternate: keep metals and colours next to each other, so Or or Argent always meets Gules, Azure, Sable, Vert or Purpure.

Parts of a shield: field, divisions, ordinaries, charges

The field is the background. It can be one tincture or divided: per pale splits it vertically, per fess horizontally, per bend along a diagonal from the top-left corner to the bottom-right, per chevron in an upside-down V, per saltire into four triangles, and quarterly into four quarters. The first tincture named is the one in chief — the top, or the dexter side for a vertical split — which is why the order of the two colours in a blazon carries meaning.

Ordinaries are the wide geometric bands that came to be treated as the simplest kind of charge: a chief across the top, a fess across the middle, a pale down the centre, a bend on the diagonal, a cross, a saltire, a chevron and a bordure around the edge. Anything else is a charge proper: here a mullet, crescent, roundel, lozenge, fleur-de-lis, rose, trefoil, tower, sword, crown, anchor or ship. Charges are arranged the conventional way — one in the middle, two in pale, three as two and one — and when an ordinary is present they are drawn on it, which is why the blazon then says on a chief or on a fess.

What this generator draws, and what it leaves out

The subset is deliberate and it is listed in full so you can see the edges: seven tinctures, six field divisions plus the plain field, eight ordinaries, twelve charges, and three shield outlines that change nothing but the picture. Not drawn: furs, attitudes such as a lion rampant or an eagle displayed, real heraldic beasts, marshalling two coats together, cadency marks, and the rest of the achievement — helmet, mantling, crest, supporters and motto. A blazon of complex arms will not fit in this grammar, and the parser names the word it did not understand instead of quietly dropping it.

The three outlines are all flat and full width across the chief, which is not an aesthetic choice: a charge arranged the conventional way for a shield that is square at the top would be sliced by an oval or lozenge outline that narrows towards the top, so those outlines are not offered rather than offered and drawn wrong.

The geometry is likewise a modern drawing rather than a facsimile of any fifteenth-century roll of arms. The proportions of an ordinary, the exact curve of a heater shield and the shape of each charge are drawing decisions, not heraldry; two heralds would approve the same blazon and still produce different pictures. What is fixed is the vocabulary and the reading order, which is the part that actually carries meaning.

Is there a coat of arms for my surname?

Almost always no, and this is the single most useful thing to know before you buy anything with a crest on it. Arms belong to people and descend by inheritance. Nothing in the system ties them to a surname, and the reason so many unrelated Smiths and MacDonalds appear to have the same arms is that a commercial industry has attached decorative shields to common surnames and sells them as family history. A surname lookup is a lookup of a name, not of your ancestry.

What you can honestly do is design your own, which is what this tool is for, and treat it as a design. Where a heraldic authority exists, a grant is the formal route: the College of Arms in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the Court of the Lord Lyon in Scotland, both grant arms and both charge for it. In most other countries no authority exists and no permission is needed. Using arms that belong to someone else as if they were yours is, at minimum, a claim you cannot support.

Why draw it in the browser

Nothing is uploaded and there is no account, which matters more than usual for a design like this: a coat of arms is often tied to a real name, a family story or a society, and the sensible default is that it should never leave your device. The whole tool is a few hundred lines of JavaScript and a document you can save, and it keeps working offline once the page has loaded.

It also means the output is inspectable. The SVG in the code box is exactly what the shield on screen is drawn from — the same string, not a screenshot — so you can read it, edit it, or hand it to a plotting library. The blazon next to it is the description, and it is the part worth keeping: whatever happens to this website, Azure, on a chief Or three mullets Gules will still mean the same thing to anyone who knows the language.

Is this a real grant of arms?

No. This tool draws a shield from the choices you make and describes it in heraldic language, but nothing here is a grant. In Scotland the Lord Lyon King of Arms, and in England, Wales and Northern Ireland the College of Arms, are the authorities that grant arms; in most other countries there is no authority at all and you are free to design and use your own. Treat the result as a design, not as a title.

What is a blazon?

A blazon is the written description of a coat of arms, in a fixed vocabulary and word order, so that any herald anywhere can redraw the same arms from the words alone. It names the field first, then the principal ordinary or charge, and it never says left or right: it says dexter for the bearer's right side (your left as you look at the shield) and sinister for the other. The colour names are heraldic as well: gold is Or, and silver or white is Argent.

What is the rule of tincture?

The tinctures are split into metals (Or and Argent) and colours (Gules, Azure, Sable, Vert and Purpure). The rule says that a metal may not be placed on a metal and a colour may not be placed on a colour, so that arms stay legible at a distance and in poor light; metal on colour, or colour on metal, is the normal arrangement. The rule has well known exceptions, so this tool warns you instead of refusing to draw.

Is there a coat of arms for my surname?

Usually not. Arms belong to a person and descend to that person's descendants; they are not attached to a surname, and two families with the same surname almost never share the same arms. Sites that sell a family crest from a surname lookup are selling decorative art, not your arms. The honest way to have arms is to design them yourself, or to apply for a grant where a heraldic authority exists.

What is the difference between a coat of arms and a crest?

The coat of arms is the whole achievement: the shield, plus the helmet, the crest standing on it, the mantling and, if there is one, the motto. The crest is only the object on top of the helmet, and the shield is only one part of the arms. So crest is not a synonym for coat of arms, and what is sold as a family crest is usually just a shield.

Can I use the SVG for a logo or merchandise?

The drawing is generated in your browser from your own choices, so there is no watermark, no licence fee and no attribution requirement from this site. Two practical warnings: a coat of arms is not a trademark, so it gives you no protection against someone else using something similar as a logo, and using arms that belong to another person or body can be a problem in countries where arms are protected by law. If you need a brand, get a trademark.