Our researchers started in 1971 to build a database of coats of arms and surname origins. To date that database holds images for around one million coats of arms and about 700,000 surname histories. Research is ongoing and new names are added on a regular basis, and data is updated.
A list of some of the old books and documents used in this research is shown below.
| Britain and Ireland |
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| A Constitutional History of Modern England |
Age of Conquest – Wales |
| Agrarian History of England and Wales | A Heraldic Alphabet |
| An Ordinary of Arms – Scotland | Assize Rolls |
| Bede’s Histories | Benet’s Readers Encyclopaedia |
| Book of Kells | Book of Ulster Surnames |
| Brights of Suffolk | Burkes Commoners, Landed Gentry, Peerage and others |
| Cabinet of Irish Literature I-III | Catholic Directory of Scotland |
| Calendarium Inquisitionum Post Mortem | Clans Septs and Regiments of the Scottish Highlands |
| Court Records | Crozier’s General Armoury |
| Curia Regis Roll | Dictionary of Irish History |
| Doomsday Book | Elvin’s Mottoes Revised |
| English Historical Facts 1603-1688 | European Society 1500-1700 |
| Falaise Roll | Family Names of County Cork |
| Fox-Davies various works | General Armoury, Burke’s |
| Highland Clans, Moncrieffe & Hicks | Highland Clearances |
| History of Congleton | History of England vols I-VII |
| History of Scotland, Browne vols I-VIII | Hundred Rolls |
| In Search of Your British and Irish Roots |
Inquisto Favidus |
| International Who’s Who | Ireland and her People |
| Irish Families, MacLysaght | Irish Pedigrees I&II |
| Kennedy’s Book of Arms | Key to Parochial Registers of Scotland |
| Knights of England | MacLysaght – The Surnames of Ireland |
| Manorial Rolls | More Irish Names |
| National Biography | Norton Encyclopedia of Music |
| Oxford Companion to Sports and Games, John Arlott |
Papworth’s Ordinary of British Armorials |
| Pipe Rolls | Regesia Regum Scottorum |
| Roll of the Battel Abbey | Scotch-Irish I&II |
| Scots Heraldry, Innes | Scots Kith and Kin |
| Scottish Clan and Family Names | Scottish Family Histories |
| Surname dictionaries by Bardsley, Reaney, Lower, Black and Hanks and Hodges |
Tartans of the Clans and Families of Scotland |
| The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle | The Celts |
| The High Kings | The Pictish Chronicle |
| The Wace Poem | Various Family Genealogies |
| Various Passenger Lists | Welsh Surnames, Morgan |