Canting arms

Canting arms are heraldic bearings that represent the bearer's name (or, less often, some attribute or function) 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. Many armorial allusions require research for elucidation because of changes in language and dialect that have occurred over the past millennium.

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."

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.

Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon: bows and lions

Princess Beatrice of York: Beatrice = bee thrice = three bees

Quintin Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone: three hog's heads

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