Our Family Crests

The following information on crests that may, or may not, be tied to our family names has not been validated in any way. There are many rumors and theories about wether or not we really have a true smo(o)renburg crest. The fact is: We don't know, no-one has shown us any proof of this. Hence the following information posted on this site may not be construed as legitimate in any way.

We have received the following crest related pictures (none of which are officially verified) to our family name. They are:

1) The crest used as a background on these pages was given to us in a much rougher form by Casper Smoorenburg in Australia who is currently using it on his private wine labels. Casper's wine label crest was digitized and used inside a picture that is used for the background on most of this web-site's pages. This background crest was originally created for a cd-like clock momentum that was given to family members during a family reunion in Texas in 1998.

2) Another crest was submitted by Vera Boumans. We are researching more information on it's origin. A scanned letter related to this crest can be found on the linked page as well.. We believe that this crest was created by one of those on-line crest generation companies, or perhaps one of those stands in souvenir/tourist locations where you can pay them a fee to look-up or create a crest based on your name.

In researching some general crest information on the meaning of crest features, one might deduct that the round shape of the crest itself indicates use between 1504 and 1587 and in 1740 in the Netherlands when the name changed from Schipper to van Smoorenburch. The shape of the helmet may have been used since the 17^th Century to depict rank and in our instance depicts the barrier helm for baronets (not royalty, but a wealthy man) and knights. Again, none of this information is verified in any way.

As for our name(s), there is no clear documented origin for our name other then at some point in time it appears to have changed from 'Schipper' to 'Smoorenburg'. One of the theories is that the origin of the name: S' indicates from; moor  Our ancestors were schippers or boat captains along the rivers where the land on the route they traveled was moor, marshland, lowlands or bog; burch  (depicted by the castle) is a fortification called a burch that protected their trading areas or centers of commerce.

One other input and theory communicated to us: The name would come from Des Mooren Burcht, meaning the castle of the Moors, and originally from Spain. When the Moors conquered Spain, there was a castle taken and occupied by the Moors. Men from there came from ?Des Mooren Burcht?, which was later Smoorenburg.

and yet another states: “I remember, my father (Fritz) had some documentation about our ancestors and discovered we are originally from what is now called Poland. Somewhere between Warszawa and Gdansk there was a farm and in a small war between two lords, the owner helped the “right” one. After this conflict, the farmer was given a piece of land and he became a gentleman-farmer. This is supposed to have happened in the 13th Century (at that time Germany took over some parts of Poland). Because the new farm was built on a moor, (Eng. also called moor, peat, fen or bog) he called it the Moor-Burg (castle)."

If you should find any authentic information regarding the origin of our name and crest, please pass on the information to Jean Huot Smoorenburg (jean@smoorenburg.com) so it can be included on this site and in our genealogy.

During 2004 Marco was playing around with video capture and edit related software and created these crest videos version1 & version2....