Here is what is real, and what to give.
The Heart in Heraldry, and the Best Story Attached to One
The heart is a real heraldic charge, and the most famous example has a documented origin that is hard to improve on.
When Robert the Bruce died in 1329, he asked that his heart be carried to the Holy Land. Sir James Douglas took it, and got as far as Spain, where he was killed fighting the Moors at Teba in 1330. The Douglas arms have borne a crowned human heart ever since, and the family has carried it for seven hundred years.
That is what a heraldic charge actually is: not a symbol of an abstract virtue, but a record of something that happened, to a named person, on a date.
Hearts appear elsewhere too — the Danish royal arms carry nine of them, though they began as sea-leaves and became hearts through centuries of redrawing, which is a useful reminder that heraldic images drift.
The True-Love Knot
Heraldry has an entire family of knots, each belonging to a specific house and each drawn in a distinct, immediately recognisable way: the Stafford knot, the Bourchier knot, the Bowen knot, the Wake knot, the Harington knot, the Heneage knot.
They are badges rather than charges on a shield — worn by a lord's followers, and used as a household mark — and the generic term for the interlaced form is the true-love knot: a line with no beginning and no end.
It is one of the few pieces of heraldic symbolism that means what it appears to mean, and it predates every Valentine's card ever printed.
And Impalement: How Heraldry Marries Two People
The formal heraldic record of a marriage, and it is worth knowing.
Two coats placed side by side on one shield, split down the middle: the husband's arms in dexter — the bearer's right, the viewer's left — and the wife's in sinister. That is an impalement, and it is personal to the couple. Their children bear the father's arms, not the impaled version.
An impaled shield is a snapshot of two specific people, for the length of one marriage. Which makes two the honest answer to "whose arms" on a gift for a couple — and in practice that means a pair.
What to Give
For the hand
A women's signet ring or a signet ring. Women wore signets throughout the medieval and early modern periods and sealed with them in exactly the same way, so this is not an adaptation of a men's piece. A women's signet works particularly well above a wedding band, where a second conventional ring would compete — and as an alternative to a conventional engagement ring it is an unusually good one.
Sizing, since it is a surprise: borrow a ring they already wear on the intended finger, measure at the end of the day rather than the morning, and know that a heavy bezel limits how far a band can be resized afterwards.
For the desk, and for actual letters
A wax seal cut with the family coat of arms is the one heraldic object that can still be used for the job it was invented for — and a sealed letter is a considerably better Valentine's gesture than a card.
Two notes: use modern flexible sealing wax for anything going through the post, since traditional shellac is brittle and shatters; and chill the seal between impressions so it releases cleanly.
For the wall
A pair of framed coats of arms, one for each family name, hung together. That is an impalement in two frames, and it is the version that fits a hallway.
For the reader
The Heritage Volume for their name — what the historical record holds for it, where it comes from, what it meant, and the arms associated with it. It arrives digitally, which makes it the honest answer on the 13th.
How Your Report Is Made sets out which parts come from public records and which our system builds, including the crest, which is original artwork rather than a facsimile of an armorial entry.
Which Name?
The question that decides the gift. For a partner who has taken your surname, her maiden name is a different family — different records, different place. The married name is the family you built; the maiden name is the one she grew up in, and it is very often the one nobody has ever looked up.
Check the spelling against a document rather than memory, because engraving cannot be undone. Ó Súilleabháin, O'Sullivan and Sullivan lead to different places, and so do Müller, Mueller and Miller.
Timing
Engraved pieces are made rather than picked off a shelf, so work two to three weeks back from the 14th and add shipping. February is short and the post is not.
If it is already the 11th, a volume is delivered digitally and needs no size.
One Thing to Skip
Any table telling you that a particular colour on their family's arms means passion, loyalty or devotion. Those lists come from a seventeenth-century literary fashion, not from heralds — A. C. Fox-Davies, whose Complete Guide to Heraldry remains the standard reference, called the symbolism of colours "absolutely and entirely fiction".
The Douglas heart is better than any of it, precisely because it is true. Our guide to what heraldic symbols actually record covers the difference.
More options across every occasion in our guide to family crest gifts.
