3 Answers

......

Colleen

Heraldry is the profession, study, or art of creating, granting, and blazoning arms and ruling on questions of rank or protocol, as exercised by an officer of arms.[1] Heraldry comes from Anglo-Norman herald, from the Germanic compound harja-waldaz, "army commander".[1] The word, in its most general sense, encompasses all matters relating to the duties and responsibilities of officers of arms.[2] To most, though, heraldry is the practice of designing, displaying, describing, and recording coats of arms and heraldic badges.

Historically, it has been variously described as "the shorthand of history"[3] and "the floral border in the garden of history."[4] The origins of heraldry lie in the need to distinguish participants in combat when their faces were hidden by iron and steel helmets.[5] Eventually a formal system of rules developed into ever more complex forms of heraldry. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraldry

Nice try short dog.I almost got your meening. But I don't think it is a language.

Heraldry is a family's crest or coat of arms.

Heraldry evolved in 12th-century Western Europe, probably in response to the growing difficulty of recognising men in armour as that armour became heavier and more enveloping. At Hastings, when a rumour spread among the Normans that WILLIAM I (THE CONQUEROR) had been killed, he had only to tilt his helmet back as he rode among them for all to see that he was alive. Two hundred years later such a feat would have required considerable exertion and the help of a squire. Men in armour could by now only distinguish one another by devices on their shields or on the surcoats worn over their armour. Noblemen's devices were used by their followers as badges on their own shields and coats, and in the feudal army men were accustomed to muster under the banner of their lord, which was marked with his coat of arms. Crests, which were also distinguishing marks, came later. They probably spoke the Norman language.

Heraldic devices became hereditary as first the son then the more remote descendants of the original feudal lord retained the original device so as to guide their followers in battle. The devices outlived the use of armour, however, and by the 17th century were being widely used in non-military ways. By now the granting and use of coats of arms in England had come under the supervision of a body of heralds called the College of Arms, which had been set up under royal authority in 1483. In Scotland the Lyon Office, later Lord Lyon Office, supervised the use of arms.