The short answer to this question is simply: NO. While the use and ownership of heraldic devices is closely tied to the nobility, and has been since heraldry first came into use, it is not in itself a root of noble status.
For centuries coat-armour has in many countries been borne by people not born to the nobility. Some of them have been elevated to that status, but owning a coat of arms does not make one a nobleman.

In some countries only titled nobles may bear arms. So in those jurisdictions, owning a coat of arms flows from the status of being noble.

But this doesn’t work in the opposite direction.

In Britain, being granted a coat of arms is an honour from the Crown – it has been described as “an honour, albeit a minor honour”.

It has been argued that owning a coat of arms in Britain signifies that one is noble. In a remote sense this is correct, since the word noble derives from the Latin nobilis, meaning “known to the authorities” – and one cannot obtain a grant of arms in Britain without being known to the heraldic authorities.

Indeed, before you can obtain a British grant, you have to satisfy the heralds that you are an honourable person.

However, in Britain the only people counted as actually being noble are those holding peerage titles – until the New Labour Party started messing with the House of Lords, this meant holding a title that entitled you to a seat in the Lords – and the spouses of such peers.

So while British peers and peeresses (and their spouses) are noble, their children and grandchildren are not, unless and until they succeed to such titles, or are granted fresh ones.

Nobility is not accounted to baronets, knights or the recipients of lesser honours from the Crown, nor to their spouses or offspring. However, the male holder of such a title might be married to a titled lady.

In the United States there is furious debate over the noble status “conferred” by a grant of arms.

[4] The only legally constituted College of Arms is the one in London.

[5] This ban was not applied retrospectively. Those South Africans who already held knighthoods and baronetcies, and Lord De Villiers of Wynberg, the sole South African baron, retained their titles.

Knighthoods die with their holders, while baronetcies are heritable. An example of a current South African baronet is Sir David Graaff, 3rd baronet.

Since the 1926 ban, the only titles which South Africans have been able to accept have been honorary knighthoods and damehoods. Long-serving Opposition parliamentarian Helen Suzman is an honorary dame.

There are several Americans who also hold honorary knighthoods. At one stage the musician Yehudi Menuhin was one of them, but after becoming a British subject he was created a baron, and was styled Lord Menuhin.

[6] The only British sovereign who actually presided over a South African parliamentary sitting was King George VI, who came to the throne in 1936 and opened Parliament in Cape Town in 1947.

In 1995 his daughter, Queen Elizabeth (who, as heir presumptive, had accompanied the King in 1947), addressed Parliament, but on this occasion the situation was entirely different. She was not there as Queen of South Africa (a title she had held from 1953 to ’61), but as Head of the Commonwealth, to which South Africa had been readmitted the year before after more than three decades of exclusion.

She did not preside over Parliament, but attended as an invited guest of President Nelson Mandela.

[7] This example comes to mind from American fiction, not heraldic research – to wit, it was the name used by one of the two confidence tricksters who accompanied Huckleberry Finn down the Mississippi on a raft in Mark Twain’s novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Charlatans wanting to milk wealthy people of their fortunes convince them that through obtaining a grant from this or that Order or College (sometimes such a spurious organisation might even style itself a College of Arms)[4] they will automatically become noble.

The counter-argument is simply that the United States Constitution denies the status of nobility to all citizens – noblemen wanting to become citizens have to renounce their titles.

South Africa has a comparable situation, because since 1925 there has been a ban on citizens of this country accepting “foreign titles”.[5]

This is an ironic restriction, since at the time King George V of Great Britain was South Africa’s Head of State, yet he was forbidden by the Union Parliament (of which he was titular head)[6] to grant any titles to South African citizens.

But coats of arms were not regarded as falling under this restriction, and in fact in the 1950s a herald from the College of Arms visited South Africa with the purpose of ensuring regular heraldic practice in this country.

The College made several grants to South African municipalities and other institutions following this visit, and had been making grants to individual South Africans since long before the 1925 ban.

A significant difference between the US ban on noble titles and the one operative in South Africa is that while the US bans titles outright (for citizens), South Africa only bars the creation of new titles for its citizens. There is no restriction on the inheritance of titles. In 1996 John Murray, a land surveyor from Haenertsburg in Limpopo Province, inherited (from a distant relative) the dukedom of Atholl.

ON the other hand, there is always the possibility that that family heirloom you keep with the coat of arms (or crest) decoration might just be proof that you are the lost Duke of Bridgewater.[7]

But this is most often the stuff of fantasy, not real life. All the same, it is worth studying your family tree, whoever and whatever your ancestors might have been. There are always interesting surprises.