Hey, so I thought I had posted this before but it must have somehow not gotten through, maybe my Internet was down, idk.
Anyway I've said before that the inconsistency concerning the description of House coats of arms really annoys me. So sometimes there is only a normal English description (House Stark) and sometimes there is only the formal blazon (House Cerwyn). Mostly, however, both are used, first the English description and then, in Italic and in parentheses, the blazon, so I would propose doing that everywhere.
Moreover, some descriptions or blazons are just incorrect (House Bolton) ore use, in my opinion, too much heraldic vocabulary in what's supposed to be the normal English description (House Locke).
Also, sometimes the blazon seems to have formed around an interpretation of the artist who designed the House crest used in the wiki, even though such a clear description was never given in any canon or semi-canon material and should therefore not be included in the blazon. E.g. the description of the bullmoose of House Hornwood includes the adjective "trippant" which would be the correct word for the description of the position of the moose (in this case just walking) if this description were ever mentioned anywhere. Sure, the artist had to make a choice when designing the Hornwood banner, and decided that the moose should be walking, but that doesn't mean it's canon. Maybe I'm just nitpicking here, but I think these things are important. I mean, if an artist to give the House Stark direwolf brown eyes, that would be alright since the eye colour is never explicitly stated and doesn't change the fact that it's still a grey direwolf. But you couldn't start saying in the blazon that the wolf is "orbed brunâtre" retroactively because it isn't necessarily.
Anyway, I would therefore strongly propose going for more consistency here and I could absolutely provide the blazons where missing. Here just a few examples of some Northern Houses coats of arms and how I would correct their descriptions.
House Stark: A running grey direwolf, on an ice-white field (Argent, a direwolf courant cendrée)
House Bolton: A red flayed man on pink scattered with red drops (Rose goutty de sang, a flayed man gules)
House Cerwyn: A black battle-axe on silver (Argent, a battle-axe sable) [I've removed the adjective "pale-ways" here, because I'm fairly certain that this is never mentioned either.]
House Dustin: Two rusted longaxes with black shafts crossed, a black crown between their points, on yellow (Or, two longaxes in saltire tenné shafted sable, between their points a crown sable) [I'm not quite satisfied using the tincture "tenné". That would be a colour somewhere between orange and brown but the original description only uses "rusted" which could be any shade of red, brown or orange. I could include rusted in the blazon but since that's not a tincture, you would still have to include some tincture if you conform to traditional heraldry. GRRM doesn't however, so maybe using just rusted IS enough, idk. So that's a bit tricky... I'm open to other suggestions.]
House Hornwood: A brown bullmoose with black antlers on orange [taken from The Citadel] (Tenné, a bullmoose brunâtre attired sable)
House Locke: Two bronze keys crossed on an white pale on purple (Purpure, on a pale argent two keys in saltire bronze) [There is only one precedent for using "bronze" as a heraldic tincture in real life, and in medieval times this would not have existed, the only metals used in thoses times being gold (or) and silver (argent). However, since GRRM breaks with traditional heraldry anyway, I don't see why we can't include it here. I really don't want to describe it as orange (tenné) or brown (brunâtre) since it clearly isn't.]
House Manderly: A white merman with dark green hair, beard and tail, carrying a black trident, over a blue-green field (Aquamarine, a merman argent crined, bearded and queued vert, carrying a trident sable)
House Poole: A blue plate on white, with a grey tressure (Argent, a hurt within a tressure cendrée)
House Reed: A black lizard-lion on grey-green (Vert, a lizard-lion sable)
House Umber: A roaring giant, brown-haired and wearing a skin, with broken silver chains, on flame-red (Gules, a giant roaring brunâtre habited with a skin wearing chains broken argent)
So like I said, these are just a few examples. I would really like to know if I am wasting my time with this stuff or if it is actually appreciated. If it is, I will comb through every House and correct the blazons where necessary but I just wanted to give you guys some examples and see what you think of this. Am I nitpicking or do you agree that we should go for more consistency?