What are family crests?

Answer 1

There is no such thing as a family crest; crests are part of the overall heraldry held by an individual (usually a man). They refer to the crest worn on top of a knight's helmet during the late medieval period - not to the design on the shield.

A crest can be many kinds of things like a swan, a deer's head and neck, a man's arm holding a sword, a ship, a standing dragon and so on. This crest was often used as a badge by the knight's retainers and servants, who were not permitted to have a coat of arms.

Fraudsters have in modern times pretended to be able to identify "your family coat of arms" in return for payment; this idea is completely false because if you have been awarded a complete coat of arms (with motto, supporters, mantling and crest) you will already have a legal heraldic document proving it - nobody without that evidence can claim to have any heraldry.

Answer 2

If you have a family crest, it is because some part of your ancestry had some form of noble status in a Western European country. Family crests or coats of arms started as paintings on shields to identify a warrior during a battle. During the medieval period the meanings of the paintings became formalized and changed from identifying a single person, to identifying a family. Each design on the crest had a meaning. For instance, gold rings on a coat of arms meant that the family was wealthy. Spears meant the family had prowess in battle. Later coats of arms had mottos added; usually written in Latin. These days Coats of Arms have little function other than curiosity.