The Stag Coat of Arms: Meaning and Design

What a stag means in heraldry

Peace and harmony: someone who will not fight unless provoked. The stag is strong and well armed, yet it lives quietly in the forest, so heraldic tradition made it a symbol of strength held in reserve. Those meanings come from later writers rather than any fixed rule, but they suit the animal well, and they make the stag a lovely emblem for a calm, steady family.

Deer were also the great beasts of the medieval hunt, so a stag on a shield could hint at forests, estates and the outdoors. That is still why people choose one today: it feels like the hills, the woods and home.

The special words heralds use for deer

Heralds gave deer a vocabulary of their own. A stag or hart is the male red deer; hart is the older word for a mature stag. A buck is a fallow deer and a hind is a female. The antlers are called attires and each point is a tyne, so a stag with gold antlers is "attired Or".

The poses have their own names too:

• Caboshed: just the head, seen from the front with its antlers, with no neck showing. This is the stag drawn in Crest Studio, and the most common deer in Scottish arms.
• At gaze: standing still and turning its head to look straight at you.
• Trippant: walking at an easy pace, the deer's word for passant.
• Courant: running at full speed.
• Springing: leaping, the deer's word for salient.
• Lodged: lying down, used for deer where other beasts are couchant.

Famous stags in heraldry

• The Mackenzies of Kintail: the earliest known record of their chief's arms, from 1542, is a gold stag's head caboshed on blue. Those arms belong to the chief, so use them as inspiration only.
• Württemberg: three black stag antlers on gold, still seen in the greater arms of the German state of Baden-Württemberg.
• Richard II of England: his personal badge was a white hart, painted on the Wilton Diptych of about 1395 to 1399. It is why the White Hart is still a common name for English pubs.

Outside heraldry, Edwin Landseer's 1851 painting The Monarch of the Glen, now owned by the National Galleries of Scotland, made the Highland stag a picture of Scotland itself. Red deer are native to Ireland as well, which is why the stag suits both Scottish and Irish crests.

Designing your stag crest

Colors

A gold stag on green is the forest itself, and gold on blue echoes the old Mackenzie arms. A silver stag on red is bright and bold, and a black stag on silver reads crisply even at small sizes. Each keeps the rule of tincture: a metal against a color.

Names with a deer in them

Hart and Hartley come from the Old English heorot, a hart, and Hirsch is German for deer. A stag on a crest for a family with one of those names is a classic heraldic pun, known as canting arms.

Mottos

Try Pax et Fortitudo (peace and strength), Dum Spiro Spero (while I breathe, I hope) or plain English such as "Gentle but Unbowed". The Latin motto generator has more, and the meanings guide explains every color.

Design a stag crest

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