Blazonry

Wikipedia:

In heraldry and heraldic vexillology, a blazon is a formal description of a coat of arms, flag or similar emblem, from which the reader can reconstruct the appropriate image.

Blazons have many composable components, from simple colors (“tinctures”, and by the way, these links will set the preview, below) and geometric shapes (“ordinary”), through iconography both simple and complex (“charge”), into patterned backgrounds (“variation”) and subdivisions (“partition”).

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Paly of thirteen Argent and Gules, a chief Azure.

Ambiguous blazon! Navigate variations:

View parsed syntax tree

Try writing your own! Here’s a very non-exhaustive listing of the components:

• tinctures: six colors (azure, gules, purpure, sable, vert, cendrée), two metals (argent, or) and five furs (vair, ermine, ermines, erminois, pean)
• ordinaries: bend (or bend sinister), fess, pale, chief, cross, chevron, saltire
• charges: roundel, mullet, fret, escallop, fleur-de-lys, lion, escutcheon
• variations: barry, bendy, barry bendy, checky, lozengy, chevronny
• partitions: per pale, per fess, per bend, per chevron, per saltire, quarterly

And a very non-exhaustive listing of how you can combine them:

• multiples: of the same charge, mixing charges and ordinaries, or variations both sparse and dense
• layout: charges between and on top of ordinaries (or both) or just in the shape of ordinaries
• ornamentation: for ordinaries, partitions, variations and even some charges
• blazons in blazons: in cantons, quarters, or escutcheons

Note that there are a lot of ordinaries and charges in real blazons, along with many slight variations in phrasing, which aren’t all supported. Check the formal grammar if you want specifics. Here’s some real ones you can try out, too:

• Azure, a bend Or.
    as made famous in the medieval times by Scrope v. Grosvenor
• Argent, a cross Gules.
    the Cross of St. George
• Per pale Sable and Argent, a fess embattled counterchanged.
    arms of Muri bei Bern, Switzerland
• Argent on a chief gules three escallops or.
    arms of the Count of Cavour
• Paly of six Or and Sable, a bend counterchanged.
    arms of the 1st Baron Baltimore, yes, that Baltimore
• Azure, a bend Argent cotised Or between six lions rampant Or.
    Bohun family arms, to which Henry IV and Henry V are related
• Quarterly: (1) Sable, a lion rampant Or, armed and langued Gules… ¹
    arms of Bavaria, which you may have seen a version of on Weihenstephan beers
• Quarterly 1st and 4th Sable a lion rampant on a canton Argent a cross Gules… ²
    arms of Winston Churchill

Some blazons (and the coats of arms they represent) can get enormously complicated.

References and introductions for blazonry terminology and structure:

• International Heraldry & Heralds
• A Grammar of Blazonry – Society for Creative Anachronism
• Basics of Blazonry – “Lord Eldred Ælfwald, Gordian Knot Herald”
• A Guide to Basic Blazonry – The Royal Heraldry Society of Canada
• Heraldry and Blazon – U. Chicago
• The Book of Traceable Heraldic Art
• DrawShield (turns out someone already made a blazon renderer…!)

Collections of arms and blazons:

• Heraldry of the World
• Armorials – Twenty Trees
• Roll of Arms – U.S. Heraldic Registry

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1. Not exactly; I subbed the panther for a lion because I couldn’t find a good panther graphic. Sorry! ↩

2. Like the Bavarian arms, some changes had to be made to the official blazoning. I don’t support phrasings like “of the first” (dispreferred “Victorianisms” ctrl-f “victorian”), the million different ways of specifying quarterings, or the underspecified “as augmentation” phrasing for inescutcheons. But it looks pretty close to correct! ↩