Could anyone tell me the meaning of the phillipson coat of arms?

Question:

Could anyone tell me the meaning of the phillipson coat of arms?

mainly what the three boars heads mean .and why one site says that we were scottish and all other site say english. i know we are from norman origin.i have got this from the house of names and infokey i have looked up hearaldy but don't really understand it. please help with the correct meaning.thank you

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: If you have traced your lineage and KNOW you are Norman, fine. Otherwise, your great grandfather may have come into Ellis Island as "Phillipovitch" and come out "Phillipson".

Some devices on C of A have meaning, some don't. There is a link at the bottom of this (it is long) about that.

http://www.ancestry.com/learn/facts/defa...

Phillipson
English and Swedish (Phillipsson): variant of Philipson.

and

Philipson
English, Swedish (Philipsson), and Jewish (western Ashkenazic): patronymic from the personal name Philip.

and

Philip
Scottish, Dutch, English, South Indian, etc.: from the Greek name Philippos (from philein ??to love?? + hippos ??horse??). In the New Testament this name is borne by one of the apostles; it was also borne by various other early Christian saints. It owes part of its popularity to the medieval romances about Alexander the Great, whose father was Philip of Macedon. As a Highland Scottish surname, it represents an Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Fhilib ??son of Philip??. In North America, this surname has absorbed some cases of cognate names in other languages (e.g. French Philippe, Greek Philippos, Italian Filippi, Spanish Felipe, Catalan Felip, and their derivatives). As a Jewish name, it represents a borrowing of the personal name from Christians. It is found as a personal name among Christians in India, and in the U.S. is used as a family name among families from southern India.

Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4

This next is a text file I copy because I'm a slow typist. If you asked about a family crest instead of a family coat of arms, you should know that a crest is just the top part of a coat of arms.

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With a couple of rare exceptions from Eastern Europe, coats of arms were given to specific indivuals, not families. The oldest legitimate son inherits it.

Supose Sir Thomas Smith, Sir Richard Smith and Sir Harold Smith all get Coats of Arms in 1512. By 2006 there is just one legitimate eldest son of eldest son of eldest son . . . each, for a total of three men. (Unless someone died before they had a son.)

BUT - there are four million Smiths in the US, England, Canada, Australia, plus the branch of the family in Argentina started in 1912, after the trouble with the bank auditors in Philadelphia.

You are a merchant, selling plaques, coffee mugs, T-shirts and parchment-colored paper scrolls with coats of arms on them. (Everything is highest quality at lowest cost, of course.) Hmmmm. Which would get you more sales - to sell them to those three eldest sons, or to the four MILLION people with surname Smith, including some who were "Schmidt" or "Smithkowski" or "Wjoschmitz" before they came through Ellis Island?

You can see why some people would want to advertise "Family" Coats of Arms. They can sell them to every Tom, Dick and Harry in the country named Smith. To be fair to them, they are meeting a need. People want to think of their ancestors as riding down the lane in a shining coat of armor, not mucking out the kinghtly stable. If there wasn't a huge demand for "Family" coats of arms, there wouldn't be merchants vending same.

What you get with a "Family" coat of arms is a C of A that was once awarded to someone with that surname, usually. If they get an order for 50 T-shirts for a reunion and can't find a C of A that had ever been awarded to someone of that surname, you get the best guess of the guy in the graphics department, who uses a lot of lions rampant on a crimson field with verdant argules.

Wikipedia has articles on Coats of Arms and heraldry, if you are interested:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/heraldry...
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