Belgian Coat of Arms: Flemish, Walloon & Noble Heraldry

Belgian heraldry runs along the same line that runs through everything else in the country.

Flanders, Dutch-speaking, belongs to the Low Countries tradition: strong burgher heraldry, simple bold shields, arms borne by townspeople as a matter of course.

Wallonia, French-speaking, sits closer to the French and Burgundian tradition, with more attention to titles and rank marks.

Overlaying both is the prince-bishopric of Liège, an independent ecclesiastical state for eight hundred years until 1795, with an entirely separate heraldic history and its own distinctive emblem, the perron — the stepped column that stood in the market place as the symbol of civic liberty.

Or, a lion rampant Sable armed and langued Gules — a black lion on gold, with red claws and tongue.

The arms of the County of Flanders, in use from the twelfth century and among the oldest continuously borne arms in Europe. It is a textbook case of the rule of tincture doing its work: black on gold is the highest-contrast combination available, and the shield is legible at any distance and at any size.

The Flemish lion has had an unusually active political afterlife. It became the emblem of the Flemish movement in the nineteenth century, largely through Hendrik Conscience's novel De Leeuw van Vlaanderen (1838) about the Battle of the Golden Spurs in 1302, and it remains the flag of the Flemish Region.

Its neighbours are equally plain and equally old: Brabant bears Sable, a lion rampant Or — the same design inverted — and Hainaut and Luxembourg both bear lions of their own. Belgium's national arms take the Brabant lion.

The fifteenth century made the Low Countries the most heraldically sophisticated place in Europe.

Under the Dukes of Burgundy — Philip the Good and Charles the Bold — Bruges, Ghent and Brussels became the wealthiest cities north of Italy, and heraldic display reached a level of elaboration seen nowhere else. It is the period of the great painted armorials, of tournament books, and of professional heralds attached to every court.

Its most concentrated expression is the Order of the Golden Fleece, founded by Philip the Good at Bruges in 1430. Each knight's arms were painted on a stall plate in the order's chapel, and those plates — precisely dated, individually attributed — are among the most reliable heraldic evidence of the period anywhere in Europe.

This is the fact that distinguishes Belgium from most of the Continent, and it surprises people.

The Conseil de Noblesse / Raad van Adel advises the King, who continues to confer nobility and to grant arms. Belgium is one of a very small number of European monarchies still creating hereditary nobles — typically a handful each year, on the basis of distinguished service — and new grants of arms are made with them.

For everyone else, the regions handle it. The Vlaamse Heraldische Raad, the Flemish Heraldic Council, registers arms for any Fleming who asks and whose design is sound; Wallonia and Brussels have equivalent arrangements for civic and personal arms.

So if your family is Belgian and you want arms of your own, there is a functioning and accessible route — which is not true in France, Germany or Italy.

Belgian surnames were fixed by the same Napoleonic requirement that fixed Dutch ones — civil registration introduced under French rule, with a decree of 1811 requiring a permanent family name. Many urban families had had one for centuries already.

Flemish names follow Dutch patterns:

• Patronymic — Peeters, Janssens, Willems, Claes, Mertens, Hermans.
• Occupational — De Smet and Desmet (the smith, and the most common surname in Belgium), De Backer (baker), De Meyer (steward or bailiff), Maes.
• Toponymic — Van den Berghe (from the hill), Vandevelde (from the field), Van Damme (from the dyke), Verhoeven (from the farmstead).
• Nickname — De Jong (the young), De Wit (the white), Goossens.

Walloon names follow French patterns: Dubois, Dupont, Lambert, Martin, Leclercq, Dumont, Renard, Thiry.

The prefix rule that differs from the Netherlands

A practical point worth knowing if you are searching records. In Belgium the prefix — Van, De, Vander — is normally capitalised, is legally part of the surname, and is alphabetised under the prefix: Van den Berghe is filed under V. In the Netherlands the same name is filed under B.

Belgian prefixes are also frequently written solid — Vandenberghe, Vandevelde, Verhoeven — so search the joined and the separated forms both.

• Rietstap's Armorial Général, which covers the Low Countries in depth.
• The Wapenboek Gelre (about 1370–1414), the great armorial of the region, digitised.
• The stall plates of the Order of the Golden Fleece, for the fifteenth-century nobility.
• The Annuaire de la Noblesse de Belgique and the publications of the Office Généalogique et Héraldique de Belgique.
• The Belgian State Archives, whose search.arch.be portal offers free access to parish registers from the sixteenth century and to civil registration from 1796 — one of the better free national archives in Europe.

The Heritage Volume sets out what the historical record holds for a surname — where it comes from, what it meant, where its bearers were concentrated, and the arms associated with it. How Your Report Is Made explains which parts come from public records and which our system builds.

For the neighbouring tradition, see our guide to Dutch heraldry and burgher arms.

Display the arms in a framed coat of arms, or carry the crest on a signet ring.