Canting arms

A common simple example of canting arms: the castle representing the Kingdom of Castile and the lion representing the Kingdom of León.

Canting arms are heraldic bearings that represent the bearer's name in a visual pun or rebus. The term cant came into the English language from Anglo-Norman cant, meaning song or singing, from Latin cantāre, and English cognates include canticle, chant, accent, incantation and recant.

French heralds used the term Armes Parlantes ("Talking Arms"), as they would sound out the name of the armiger.

Canting arms – some in the form of rebuses – are quite common in German civic heraldry. They have also been increasingly used in the 20th century among the British royal family. When the visual representation is not straightforward but as complex as a rebus, this is sometimes called a rebus coat of arms. An in-joke among Society for Creative Anachronism heralds is the pun, "Heralds don't pun; they cant."

Examples of canting arms

Personal coat of arms

A famous example of canting arms are those of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (Queen Consort of the United Kingdom 1936-52 and Queen Mother 1952-2002). Her arms (pictured below) contain in sinister (i.e. on the bearer's left, viewer's right) the bows and blue lions that make up the arms of the Bowes and Lyon families.

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  Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon: bows and lions
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  Princess Beatrice of York: Beatrice = bee thrice = three bees
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  Quintin Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone: three hog's heads
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  Cockburn: three cocks (roosters)
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  Crowninshield family: crown on the shield
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  De Barry family: three bars gemelles
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  Flag of Maryland, originally the arms of George Calvert, 1st Lord Baltimore, whose mother's maiden name was Crossland; the latter's arms shows a cross on land (the field).

Municipal coat of arms

Municipal coats of arms which interpret the town's name in rebus form are also called canting. Here are a few examples.

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  The arms of Berwickshire, Scotland: Bear and Wych Elm
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  Elmbridge, Surrey (1974): elm tree on bridge. (The toponym is related to bridges but not to elms; the prefix refers to Emel, a former name for the river Mole.)
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  Châteaurenard: Château = castle; Renard = fox
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  Eberbach (1976): Eber = boar; Bach = brook (wavy blue fess)
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  Hensbroek (1817): The coat of arms of the village of Hensbroek in North Holland interprets the toponym as "hen-breeches" (the toponym is unrelated to either "hen" or "breeches", deriving from a personal name Hein and the Dutch cognate of "brook", i.e. "Henry's brook".)
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  Freixo de Espada à Cinta (1926): Freixo = ash; de Espada = with sword; à Cinta = at the waist, in Portuguese
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  Falkenberg (1971): Falken = falcon; Berg = hill, in Swedish
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  Seinäjoki (1951): seinä = wall, joki = river, in Finnish
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  Berlin (1954): Bär = bear
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  Manacor: man = hand, a = at, cor = heart, in Catalan
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  Torrevieja (1829): Torre = tower, vieja = old
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  Kryvyi Rih: Kryvyi = crooked, Rih = horn, in Ukrainian
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  Rueda (1986): rueda = wheel in Spanish

References

• "Meaning of Arms". Heraldica.org. 2001-06-20.