Intrawebs for the win

[pbray]

One of my nieces is doing a school genealogy project, and emailed me to ask if the Bray family had a coat of arms. Brays are tricky-- you can find the Bray surname all over Europe, and a cursory Google search will pop up arms associated with the Brays of England and Germany, while my father's people were from Cork, Ireland.

But my grandfather was Florrie Sullivan, and back in 1979 he was issued his own personal coat of arms. It occurred to me there might be a record of it online, and sure enough there it was: catalog listing from the National Library of Ireland.

I remember when he received the grant, and I was too young to understand what an honor it was. It was just another framed picture on the wall, along with his medals. I'm not sure who in the family has the original these days, but the beauty of the internet is that everything is indeed online, and can now be shared.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I used to live just up the road from a Bray in Ireland, but it was part of great Dublin.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

That's very cool! I particularly like the sable-and-argent wild boar; he seems like he must mean something interesting.

What does the Irish mean? (I'm assuming it's Irish; maybe it's something else?)

[libwitch.livejournal.com]

that is really cool - and a very colorful and varied coat of arms.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

I've been there! Bray means hill, likely from one of the early Celtic languages, so it's a placename and a family name that pops up all over Europe. Oddly enough the Bray family name in Ireland is traced to two distinct regions, neither of which are near the town of Bray, though when we visit we like going there and having our pictures taken under the sign that says Bray this way :-)

[pbray.livejournal.com]

It's a variation on the standard Sullivan coat of arms, issued to him for his specific personal use by the National Herald of Ireland. The motto is the motto of the Sullivan family- The Steady Hand to Victory. Which is appropriate, given that he was being honored for his services to the country during the War of Independence.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Isn't it cool? It's a variation on the standard Sullivan clan coat of arms. (O'Sullivan Mor branch). Most people go to a gift shop, find a coat of arms with their last name, and say "Hey that's mine." But in my grandfather's case, he had an official certificate from the Irish government saying "This one is yours, and you are legally entitled to use and display it." Not that he ever did, but it would have been a cool bragging point if any of his children or grandchildren had been the type to join SCA.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

Very cool.