Joseph McMillan;79668 wrote:
I think you misinterpet President Roosevelt’s meaning. This is the president who, according to legend, opened his speech to the Daughters of the American Revolution with the words, "Fellow immigrants…"
ok. cool. thanks. i must misunderstand it then. 
i also just want to make clear i make no claim to my father’s family being noble. i think that might be a misread by Anna and, Anna, i most likely made the mix up happen by my writing style/abilities—-clearly not very good.
Joseph McMillan;79674 wrote:
The number of countries where there is serious protection of personal arms can be counted on the fingers of one hand, which calls into question the characterization of usurpation as "unlawful." Wrong, certainly, but unlawful?
In most of those countries the protection is more nominal then serious.
2/3 (England and Northern Ireland) of the UK have such laws, but never enforce them. South Africa, Canada, etc. grant arms, and may have laws against using arms granted to someone else, but they aren’t enforced. In most European countries there’s a private register, but it’s got no legal standing.
Scotland is the only one I can think of, and that’s technically only one knuckle of one Finger
Note that in most of those countries freedom of speech is more limited then it is here. The infamous Skokie march, and the funeral protests by Westboro Baptist simply would not even be issues there. OTOH here both are almost certainly Constitutionally protected speech. Bucket shops would doubtless argue that they have a right to print whatever they want, and they might win.
Legal protection would be nice, but it’s hardly likely.
Nick
The ones I would count for sure are Scotland (as you say) and France (which has clear legal precedent for enforcement of armorial rights in the normal courts).
From Francois Velde’s heraldica.org:
Quote:
The legal status of coats of arms is not to be found in the Civil Code or in laws, but in the jurisprudence of French courts since 1870.
Coats of arms are unregulated by the French authorities: anyone is free to assume arms, and there is no mechanism by which arms can be officially granted or registered. However, coats of arms are considered part of the family name, and enjoy the same legal protection against usurpation.
The following quotations illustrate this doctrine:
<ul class=“bbcode_list”>
<li>[SIZE=-1]The patronymic name and the coat of arms represent for the family which owns them a true form of property which no one has the right to usurp under pain of damages and interest. (Civil court of Marseille, June 1, 1888).[/SIZE][SIZE=-1]</li>
<li>[/SIZE][SIZE=-1]Coats of arms are essentially different from titles of nobility because they are simply marks of cognizance, supplementary to the family name to which they are indissolubly linked, whether the family is noble or not. It follows that arms are the attribute of the whole family and enjoy the same protection as the name itself, and that judicial courts which are able to adjudicate disputes over family names are also able to examine contests which can arise over coats of arms. (Paris Appeals Court, Dec 20, 1949)[/SIZE]</li>
</ul>
Civil courts, in particular, will protect a coat of arms from usurpation by a commercial enterprise and award damages.
The various German heraldry societies say the same is true of German courts, but I haven’t seen citations of the jurisprudence, only references to the section of the Civil Code on names that is supposedly the basis for this view. (Not saying it isn’t right; it probably is, I just haven’t seen the evidence.) The issue there isn’t the "officialness" of the registries but the principle that the public use of the arms (i.e., by publishing them in a roll of arms) establishes a prescriptive right to the design. Classic Roman civil law. If there actually are cases in which German courts have enforced this principle, then I would add Germany as a definite "yes."
I’m also aware of one case each in Poland and the United States (NY) in which an alcoholic beverage manufacturer was successfully sued for using someone’s coat of arms without permission.
I agree with you on England and Wales. The Court of Chivalry can theoretically protect English arms from usurpation, but the verdict in the famous 1954 Manchester case was not as rock solid as some pretend (it only prohibited the use of the city’s arms on a commercial firm’s seal, not other display of the arms), and the judge’s dictum that for the court to be used again it should be put on a statutory footing should be taken into account by those writers who insist that it’s a living institution.
(On Northern Ireland: I’m very skeptical that the Court of Chivalry has any jurisdiction in Northern Ireland. As an instrument of the Earl Marshal, it had no such jurisdiction in 1810 or 1907 when the UK law officers ruled on the EM’s lack of authority over heraldry in Ireland, and there’s been no statute enacted since then extending the court’s reach.)
If there are other countries where legal protection of personal arms has been enforced in the last century or two, I’d be very interested in hearing about it.
Last point: I don’t think the first amendment comes into this issue in the US (nor does the second, for those who are tempted). It doesn’t protect infringements of trademarks, copyright, wrongful use of a person’s name, etc. The most serious challenge, I think, would be proving concrete damages from usurpation.
@ eploy -
Thank you for writing what you wrote - I totally agree.
This what made an America so great was a multicultural diversity but it can be a pitfall if not properly understood and respected.
@ Coach Dennis -
Apologies not needed .I’m always happy to meet people and learn about their ancestry , so thank you for writing about it. We all have a genealogy and then for some there is a heraldry involved
Only today I found a website of
Burke’s Peerage & Gentry International Armorial Register of Arms
http://www.armorial-register.com/armorial-registration.html
Does anybody can share an opinion about it ?
Anna Borewicz-Khorshed
Aquilo;79683 wrote:
God created us all equal, so there is no special pride in seeking glory because of the greatness of our grandfathers .But maybe remembering them and trying hard as we can match their greatness will give us through our achievements right to embellish our own personal COA ???
It was C. S. Lewis who said that to be proud of one’s ancestors means to honor them for their achievements, not to suppose that because of their accomplishments one is better than another.
I think it is useful to view ancestors, as well as others, as a collection of qualities. We can then emulate the good things we see and disregard those things we see which are not worthy of emulation. For example, I might honor my ancestors’ bravery in war without completely endorsing the causes for which they fought.
Quote:
Only today I found a website of
Burke’s Peerage & Gentry International Armorial Register of Arms
http://www.armorial-register.com/armorial-registration.html
Does anybody can share an opinion about it ?
I’ve registered there. This primarly because I know any book published with the Burke’s imprint will eventually end up in the larger genealogical libraries. For this reason, I tried to put a good bit of genealogical information in the various entries I submitted.
All of a sudden this thread has less and less to do with the evolution of my personal arms. Whatever happened to opening new threads?!
Kelisli;79692 wrote:
All of a sudden this thread has less and less to do with the evolution of my personal arms. Whatever happened to opening new threads?!
Sorry. :">
Charles, no worries, this was not just at you, it is just that the thread took a turn away from the topic 
No worries, please.
yes, Hassan is right. please remove my comments mods. thanks.
Apologies to Hassan for chasing squirrels on his thread—I could say "but I didn’t start it"—but that would deserve no more weight than when my grandson tries to excuse his misbehavior with similar words.
I didn’t intend to trash hyphenated surnames, or even hyphenated ethnic identifiers (heck, I’m Scotch-Irish & d——d proud of it!—though correctly understood, Scotch-Irish has & continues to be a uniquely American ethnicity, neither Scottish nor Irish except as an historical footnote.) I can however see in retrospect how my comments could have come across that way. My intent, as is often the case, was much more succinctly stated by Joe in Post #158. If your immigrant ancestor disclaimed noble status as a condition of becoming an American, IMO that disclaimer is binding on his progeny—and indeed on any American—so long as they continue to claim that same citizenship.
If this discussion is to continue, perhaps the moderators could slice the relevant posts off to a new heading and allow this thread to continue re: Hassan’s original and most worthwhile topic.
At the risk of further annoying Hassan, there’s a piece of verse on the Scotch-Irish that I’ve always liked.
Now let us thank our Maker
For that which we are not;
For we know we’re not Irish,
And He knows we’re not Scots.
lol. gotta love those Scots.
Joining this meandering thread.
Jurisprudence involvings arms - Poland
see: http://www.praunik.org/artykuly/53 from 2005
"Two years ago a part of the Habsburg family which lives in Poland sued the Żywiec Brewery (the largest brewery in Poland) for using the coat of arms of the family as a part of the trade mark of brewery. The Supreme Court decided that the coat of arms deserves, similar to the name to be protected as personal right. The brewery had to change their trade mark."
This makes sense - using someone else’s arms is quite simply theft.
Shifting subjects: The US requirement to renounce a foreign order of nobility seems by design silly and ineffective. The form of renunciation is more for show than go. It is more symbolic than effective by its design.
Really the matter is one of ownership of a sort of foreign property (a set of hereditable legal rights) and not of any concern to the US at all which in any case does not recognize nobility in domestic laws but allows its citizens to for the most part to own by acquisition or inheritance such foreign property. Extending this any further to encouraging people to change their arms goes way further than is necessary. In the US all citizens are approximately equal in the eyes of the law regardless of whether they belong to an order of nobility elsewhere. No need to mess with someone’s heritage even a millimeter more than legally necesssary.
Hassan, Andy’s illustrations are excellent.
George Lucki;79755 wrote:
In the US all citizens are approximately equal in the eyes of the law regardless of whether they belong to an order of nobility elsewhere. No need to mess with someone’s heritage even a millimeter more than legally necesssary.
It is legally necessary. It’s legally necessary under U.S. law. And the purpose it serves is to ensure that those who become U.S. citizens understand and accept the implications of the first sentence above.