An armorial bearing, granted by letters patent of the relevant officer of arms, is a formal record of identity recognised by the Crown or, in republican jurisdictions, by the relevant national authority. The grant is in writing; the writing is recorded; the record is, in most cases, preserved in perpetuity.

The College of Arms in England, the Court of the Lord Lyon in Scotland, the Office of the Chief Herald of Ireland, the various continental heraldic authorities, and their colonial successors maintain the registers. The granted bearings are entered, with the grantee's name, occupation, and address at the time of the grant. The patent itself is delivered to the grantee; the entry in the register remains with the authority.

These registers are not closed. The English College of Arms allows public consultation of its records subject to its own procedures; the Court of the Lord Lyon publishes its grants in the Lyon Register; the continental authorities operate with varying degrees of openness, but in most cases the grants are findable by name and by date. A determined enquirer can establish, for most arms-bearing families, when the grant was made, on what evidence, and to which named persons.

Modern publication amplifies this. The genealogical and heraldic press covers grants; the major reference works of arms-bearing families publish the bearings with descriptions; the digital databases of heraldic scholarship contain searchable transcriptions of the older patents. The historic discretion of the grant has, in effect, been overtaken by the modern accessibility of the records.

The grant carries with it a sequence of obligations. The arms are recorded against the grantee and their lawful descendants; the descendants are entered in the register where they prove their descent; the entries accumulate over generations. The principal who inherits arms is, by the fact of inheritance, recorded in a register that no act of theirs has placed them in.

Use of the arms creates further records. A bookplate carrying the arms, a piece of stationery, a piece of plate, a memorial, a portrait, a gate, a building, or a coat of arms on a document, becomes, by use, an instance that connects the bearing to a particular life or property. Each such instance has been recorded somewhere: in inventories, in catalogues, in photographs, in printed reproductions.

Misuse is similarly recorded. Where arms have been borne irregularly, contested, or modified without authority, the relevant authorities have, on occasion, ruled on the matter. The ruling is itself a record that survives the dispute and that names the parties.

For the modern principal, the consequence is that a granted bearing is among the more deeply documented forms of personal identification available. The heraldic record is, in many cases, more reliable than the civil record; it has, in many cases, been more carefully maintained.

The work in this category is rarely about anonymity, which the historic grant did not contemplate. It is about understanding what the existing record actually contains, where the bearings have been published, and how subsequent uses can be considered with the assembled picture in mind.