Both real and joke answers are acceptable.
I’m still working on mine. Maybe a (bootlegged) bottle of Canadian Club, a nondescript bottle of prescription pills, and … I don’t know, can you draw sarcasm? Or maybe a caduceus – on my mother’s side, lots of doctors and nurses (and alcoholics and drug addicts and at least one bootlegger).
Realistically:
There is already a lion on our real one so definitely one of those. There should be a pear tree, since the surname comes from that, on it as well as a sword since a lot of past relatives a few current ones were in the Marines.
Jokingly:
If I could design it I’d keep the above and add a TARDIS and a USS Enterprise, from Star Trek, to it.
Mine would have to have a sword since the name is that of a biblical warrior. I would probably also add “$$” not because of any wealth; simply because there are a bunch of accountants in the family.
Ours could be a chicken, I suppose. At one time, one sister was manager of a Church’s Chicken, another was manager at KFC, and each place had other family members working there in various roles. Our family motto at the time was “As The Chicken Burns.”
A black cat rampant holding an architect’s T-square on an orange background. Motto is VAROKAA KISSAA (watch out for the cat, in Finnish) Upholders are a California Grizzly bear on one side and a bulldog wearing a Marine corps campaign hat on the other. Crest is a setting sun over a breaking wave.
I played around with some designs a while ago. I had only one original idea. You know ‘supporters,’ the hardware displayed behind the shield. A sword and a spear, the spear base and tip to the left, the sword hilt and tip to the right.
Broken weapons, symbolizing peace.
We have a knight’s helm on top of the “shield”, two watchful wolves on orange (the first word of my lastname means wolf; the coat of arms for the name from which mine is derived is those same wolves on orange, often with a chequered edge to the shield) on the top half, a tips-down crescent moon with a chequered edge on dark blue and no fancy stuff; Abuelita (whose own family crest is equally simple) always spoke of people with quarters, bands, supports and whatnot as “noveaux crested”.
I would like to add a beaker to mine, with the crescent moon stuck to it like a croissant someone’s trying to dunk in milk. It’s probably Not Allowed or something, though.
We have a fox and a feathered helmet, so completely generic. If I could design a new one, it would have a big bird (swan, big seagull) flying over a modern city; we have had in the last hundred years many aviation types, engineers and architects in our family.
My husbands family crest is a literal play on the Latin version of his name, which means " reeds" It is three reeds against a backdrop. So, rather fitting.
This made me laugh out loud.
A great big cloud of fart gas.
Seriously, we are one gassy family; mom, dad, bro, sis, me, any one of us can clear a room if we’re not careful.
A dodo, considering how few are left.
The dads side would be a tobacco leaf over a field of Carolina blue. Yes, it HAS to be Carolina blue. He’s the son of a Tarheel tobacco farmer. Moms side would be a pick axe on a black band across a field of crimson. An Alabama coal miners daughter.
A great big stack of books and a wheel of cheese. And a stein of beer, I guess; my grandfather was a brewer, though I don’t drink.
Thank you, I’d been looking for that word for several days now, having seen a website which offered those and insisted in calling them “mugs”. I knew they weren’t mugs but couldn’t remember the actual word.
A school bus on blocks filled with mattresses and trash bags and with a lawn chair sitting empty near the door.
Not really.
I designed one for my family a while back. Can be seen here. (There’s a page about the symbolism here, don’t mind the poor design of the page, was the very first page I attempted CSS on, and never bothered to fix it yet now that I’m better at it.)
Looks like a “real” COA, and still bitchin’ (hey, 3 lions!) at the same time.
A strait jacket, they’re all crazy. Or else a picture of the Land of Oz because their relationships with reality are tenuous at best.
Current family, there would be a computer in the middle, surrounded by Star Trek comm badges (regular and Bajoran), a Tardis and a light saber.
My birth family? Musical instruments, since just about everyone could play something. Background would be an old house with a tin roof, since that’s the kind of house my great-grandma had. There’d also be some beer. Beer seemed to be a staple in my family. Probably some cheap stuff like Milwaukee’s Best.
The Excellent family crest probably needs a sword, pen, and scales - Excellents are soldiers, defense contractors, reporters and lawyers. “Implacable hostility to censors” wouldn’t be a bad motto, if suitably translated to Latin.
“censores pugna capitalis”, per Google Translate.
Good enough?
It would have to have a stack of books. Maybe a potato for the family history on my Mom’s side. Musical stuff, like a staff or a treble cleff. In red and brown.