Is Tey or Toye the original Surname?

> only the original name can use the coat of arms.

Nope. There are gullible people all over the country using spelling variations on their t-shirts, coffee mugs and $39.99 walnut plaques. Only the eldest, legitimate son, and his eldest, legitimate son, and his . . . can use the coat of arms properly, but that doesn't stop people. Here is my stock answer:

(Crests are the top part of a Coat of Arms.)

If you are English, your family coat of arms is carved into the oak above the fireplace in the dining hall of your family's country estate. The next time you go there for the grouse season, go look at it, and take your camera. If you don't have one, you don't have the other; sorry. Your ancestors were like mine, mucking out the pigs while the aristocrats with coats of arms rode by on white horses. (Until they moved to what became the USA. Some of my ancestors saw aristocratic Brits on white horses there, too, but it was over the sights of their rifles, in 1776.)

House of names -

http://www.houseofnames.com/

will probably show you a Coat of Arms, with a crest, that was (probably) once issued to someone with the same surname as yours, BUT:

Coats of arms started so knights could tell each other apart when they were buttoned up in their suits of armor. They were given to individuals, not families. If, for instance, every knight named Smith used the same coat of arms, there would be a small army riding around with identical shields. It would be as confusing as a basketball game where both sides wore blue and every player was number 12.

The legitimate children inherit their father's Coat of Arms. The eldest son gets it exactly as Dad had it. The other sons have to pay the College of Heralds to alter it, or give it up. See

http://www.college-of-arms.gov.uk/About/12.htm

for more. It gets REALLY complicated with women. See below for some opinions.

That's where the myth of a "Family" Coat of arms comes from. People who sell T-shirts and coffee mugs, however encourage the gullible to believe Coats of Arms are for a surname. (The Irish and Scots have clans, which have badges, which are different.)

Below:

If your surname is Smith and you come from Shropshire, you may find that Sir Albert Smith, Sir Bruce Smith and Sir Charles Smith, all from Shropshire, all had C of A. If you do your research, you may find you descend from Sir Charles. If your last name is Smith, you may descend from exclusively male descendants. Now comes the question - Is using his coat of arms proper? Opinions differ.

Some say it is like demanding "your" room in the ancestral Smith estate in Shropshire, from the current owners - ridiculous and illegal.

Some say it is like wearing a Regimental tie if you didn't serve in that regiment. (Land's End sells those by the thousands to Americans. I would never buy one.)

Some say it is like wearing a Scotch Plaid shirt when you don't belong to that clan. (LL Bean sells tens of thousands of those; I have "Lindsay", myself.)

Some say it is as harmless as wearing a Detroit Tigers baseball cap when you didn't play for the team, or a UC Berkeley T-shirt when you didn't attend the University. (Or an Ohio State one, but as long as you're going to wear a University T-shirt, why not the finest?) (I have a UC Berkeley T-shirt, but I graduated from there.)

So, there's the facts and some opinions about using a "Family" coat of arms. You can make up your own mind, after you do your research.

What makes you think they are variants of each other? Coats of arms were issued to individuals, not groups. The Toye coat of arms was awarded to a long ago Toye and is his alone. There is no such thing as a family crest. Both names go back to at least the 13th century. There is no telling which came into use first and most likely are not related.

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compi...

Toye Name Meaning

English: variant spelling of Toy 1.Irish: variant of Towey. (The English name is also present in Ireland.French: variant spelling of Toy.French (Toyé): habitational name for someone from To(u)ya, a region in southwestern France (Bearn). MTM As a French name, this is associated first with the Waldensians, a group of religious reformers founded by Valdensius of Lyon, France, in the 12th century, and second with the Huguenots.

Toy Name Meaning

English: nickname for a light-hearted or frivolous person, from Middle English toy ‘play’, ‘sport’ (of uncertain origin), or from an occasional medieval personal name, Toye.French: metonymic occupational name for a sheath maker, from Old French toie ‘sheath’ (Latin theca).

Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4

http://www.fleurdelis.com/nofamilycrest.htm

They could be a variant form of toy or toye. Just because it doesn't have a coat of arms doesn't necessarily means its not an original name..

Lots of names have changed over the years. Take Doherty for example, there are lots of different spellings and pronunciations: dougherty,doughty,Doherty,Doherty, dougherteigh, o'doughhertie, dacherty,dockers.

Hope it helps,

Lil woods