Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Heraldry Used In Tree Climbing (3)

Symbols played an important part in all this heraldry stuff.  Upon each shield was placed a symbol which often was a self selected image of the person who carried the shield.   For the JONES surname, exploring these symbols to see if there were any common use was an early process.  The following figure shows the results of my study that contained 123 coat of arms for the JONES surname.  All would have been in use before 1850.  Each primary charge (symbol) was analyzed and organized as shown.  The "lion" represented the most common symbol among this group at 45%. 

One can follow the results shown in this figure which found a single lion in a standing position (called lion rampant) to be the most common symbol.  Other symbols as found are depicted with a cross/pheons (pheon = the barbed head of a dart or arrow) at 13%.  A variety of other symbols including swords/arrows, birds, boar's heads, Nag's head, Stags, Wolves, and of course the Bull.