Swiss Heraldry: Cantonal Arms, Crosses & Family Traditions

The old Confederation was a league of peasant communities and merchant cities that had spent centuries throwing out their lords. Feudal nobility survived in patches — the Bernese patriciate, the prince-abbey of St Gallen, aristocratic Fribourg and Solothurn — but as a system it was marginal, and the Federal Constitution of 1848 abolished all privileges of place and birth.

So Swiss heraldry is, overwhelmingly, civic and burgher heraldry. It belongs to cantons, communes, guilds, and to ordinary citizen families who assumed arms because everyone did. Zurich's guilds — the Zünfte — had arms and still parade under them.

Arms in Switzerland have never required permission and still do not. The Swiss heraldic societies maintain rolls, and the Archives héraldiques suisses, published since 1887, is one of the oldest heraldic journals in the world.

The great Swiss heraldic object, and one of the great medieval armorials of Europe.

The Zürcher Wappenrolle, made around 1340, is a parchment roll about four metres long carrying 559 painted coats of arms with their crests, covering the nobility of the upper Rhine, Swabia and the Swiss lands. It is unusually early, unusually complete, and unusually beautiful, and it is held at the Swiss National Museum in Zurich.

For arms of southern German or Swiss origin it is a first-rank primary source, and it is digitised.

Swiss cantonal arms are among the most austere in Europe, which is why they work so well on flags.

• Schwyz — plain red with a small white cross in the corner. The canton that gave the country its name, and the origin of the Swiss flag.
• Uri — a black bull's head on gold, with a red nose ring. Canting: Ur, the aurochs.
• Bern — a bear on a bend, canting on the city's name.
• Zurich — per bend azure and argent, with no charge at all. One of the simplest arms in existence.
• Basel — the black crozier of the prince-bishop.
• Geneva — an imperial eagle and a key, for the Empire and the bishop, with the motto Post Tenebras Lux.

The Swiss flag itself — a white cross on red, and one of only two square national flags — derives from the field sign of the Confederate troops, attested from the fourteenth century.

This is the section to read if you have Swiss ancestry.

Every Swiss citizen holds citizenship of a commune — the Heimatort or lieu d'origine — and that citizenship is inherited, not acquired by residence. A family that left its home village in 1650 and has lived in Zurich ever since is still, legally, of the original village, and its records are kept there.

Two consequences.

First, the family registers (Familienregister, Bürgerregister) are kept by the commune of origin and often run back to the seventeenth century, recording every member of every citizen family in a single continuous document.

Second, and more remarkable: the state published a national index of all of it. The Familiennamenbuch der Schweiz — the Register of Swiss Surnames — lists every surname held by Swiss citizens, the commune or communes it belongs to, and whether citizenship there was held before 1800 or acquired later.

It is free, it is online, and for a Swiss surname it does in thirty seconds what months of archive work does elsewhere: it tells you which village to go to.

Switzerland has four national languages and its surnames divide accordingly.

• German-speaking, about two-thirds of the country: Müller, Meier and Meyer, Schmid, Keller, Weber, Huber, Brunner, Baumann, Steiner, Gerber, Frei, Widmer, Ammann. Overwhelmingly occupational and toponymic, following German patterns — the guide to German heraldry and surnames applies directly.
• French-speaking, the Romandie: Favre (the Occitan-Romand form of "smith"), Rochat, Blanc, Dubois, Perret, Nicolet, Jaquier, Bochud.
• Italian-speaking, Ticino and the southern valleys of Graubünden: Bernasconi, Fontana, Rossi, Ferrari, Gianini, Beretta.
• Romansh, in Graubünden — a genuinely distinctive stock and the smallest: Caduff, Cadonau, Camenisch, Derungs, Barandun, Gartmann.

Müller is the most common Swiss surname, as it is in Germany. And as everywhere, that means it was adopted independently in hundreds of separate villages — which the Familiennamenbuch will show you, commune by commune.

Switzerland was a country of emigrants for centuries — first as mercenaries, then as settlers.

The mercenary service is the older story: from the fifteenth century Swiss companies fought for France, Spain, Naples, Venice and the Papacy, and the Papal Swiss Guard, founded in 1506, is what survives of it.

The settlement waves came in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, driven by land shortage and famine: to Pennsylvania and the Carolinas, then heavily to Ohio, Indiana and Wisconsin — New Glarus in Wisconsin was founded in 1845 by an organised emigration from the canton of Glarus, which kept the records. Also to Argentina, Brazil and southern Russia.

Swiss emigration records are unusually good precisely because of the Heimatort system: a commune that lost families recorded where they went, because they remained its citizens.

• The Familiennamenbuch der Schweiz — surname to commune. Free, online, and the first step for any Swiss name.
• The Zürcher Wappenrolle (c. 1340) and the Archives héraldiques suisses, for arms.
• Siebmacher's Wappenbuch, which includes Swiss volumes.
• Cantonal state archives (Staatsarchive, Archives d'État), which hold parish registers from the sixteenth century and the communal family registers.
• The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland (HLS / DHS) — a free scholarly encyclopaedia with entries on many notable families.

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.

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