How we check designs

SENA stands for Standards for Evaluation of Names and Armory. These are the published rules the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), a US non-profit, uses to evaluate names and coats of arms. The rules are freely available: SENA on heraldry.sca.org. We have no connection to the SCA, and the SCA has neither reviewed nor endorsed our check.

Our conflict check is based on SENA, a published standard for armorial difference. We say “based on” on purpose: our check is derived from SENA, but it does not implement SENA in full.

Distance from the coats of arms we hold

By our rules, your design differs enough from the historic coats of arms we have loaded and from the coats of arms entered in the StemmaCrest Roll of Arms.

A deliberately wide search

We first look broadly for coats of arms that could possibly be close, then compare those one by one against our rules. That shortlist holds up to 500 coats of arms and is ordered by similarity, so the near cases are reliably in it.

Four traditions, one check

Gallo-British, German-Nordic, Latin and Dutch burgher: the tradition decides how your coat of arms is drawn. The check is the same for all four.

We take from SENA only the parts needed to compare family coats of arms, and we deviate in these places:

Our own vocabulary

Which charges count as equivalent and which groups of charges make a substantial difference is set by our own vocabulary. It follows SENA but does not match its appendices entry by entry.

Counting changes

Like SENA, we tell substantial changes, one of which is enough, from distinct changes, two of which are enough. The counting is our own, simplified implementation.

Only drawn charges

Designs use only charges for which we have an approved drawing. Our set of charges is therefore smaller than SENA's and grows with every new drawing.

The shield alone decides

Whether two coats of arms are too similar is decided by the shield alone. We record the helm, the crest (the sign above the helm) and the mantling, but they do not count, because the historic sources mostly record only the shield.

A new design instead of a refusal

Where SENA refuses a design that is too similar, we create a new design before you see anything. You only receive designs that have passed the check.

We show the number of historic coats of arms loaded here as soon as our check has reported it.

Our holding comes from the Dizionario storico-blasonico by Giovanni Battista di Crollalanza (1886 to 1890), a public-domain work on Italian families. It contains no German, British or Dutch coats of arms today; if we add further sources, we name them here.

Designs are composed with software: your answers become a structured record from which the shield, the blazon and the artwork are drawn.

The check compares your design, under the rules described above, with the coats of arms we hold. We do not know coats of arms outside that holding, and within it only the shortlist is compared one by one, not every coat of arms; so nobody can honestly promise worldwide uniqueness. Only the entry in the Roll of Arms protects your design against later similar designs from other families at StemmaCrest; designs without an entry are checked themselves, but they do not stand in the way of later designs. The Roll of Arms is StemmaCrest's own roll: the entry neither registers your coat of arms with any authority nor protects it in law, and the letter of arms is a keepsake.