Tuesday, December 30, 2008

A little off topic - Family Crests

So in a totally random happening I discovered the meaning of my last name. The other day I was over at my parents house and we were talking about the new Tom Cruise movie "Valkyrie" when someone asked what the word means.

Valkyrie as defined by wikipedia pertains to Norse Mythology where female figures riding winged horses fly over the battlefield and pick up heroic warriors to take them to Valhalla. In the wiki article it shows an excerpt from a poem which lists one of the Valkyries as "Hildr" meaning "Battle". This caught my attention so I looked into it a little further and it turns out that german surename Hildebrandt is derived from the German personal name "Hildebrand" which is composed of two elements: "hild", derived frome the Old High German "hilja" meaning "fight" or "battle", and "brand" derived from the Old High German "brant" meaning "fire" or "sword".

So I'm James Battle Sword, nice to meet you ;)

I did a bit more digging and came across a few websites with family crests and coat of arms. One of which is http://www.family-crests.org/ you should check them out to see if your crest is listed.

Another site is www.houseofnames.com if you can't find yours at the above site.