The armorial bearings of the Chief of the Name and Arms form the basis of the heraldry of a clan. The arms above were awarded to John Thor Ewing as chief of Clan Ewing in 2025, and have their roots in the earliest known arms in the name of Ewing.

The heraldic traditions of Clan Ewing go back at least to 1566, when the first Ewing Coat of Arms is recorded in the Workman Armorial. In the same year, one William Ewin (sic.) was summoned to attend the court of Mary Queen of Scots. However, although this shield is the earliest recorded, it is thought not to have been the shield of the chief.

A particularly interesting feature of the shield is the flag which sits atop the chevron. In heraldic language, the chevron is said to be ‘ensigned’ – a mark of special favour granted by the sovereign. The Ewing arms are ensigned with the Ensign of Scotland, possibly denoting William Ewing’s appointment as Bearer of the Ensign of Scotland. It is said that one of Queen Mary’s standard bearers was a William Ewing, and it seems very likely that the ensignment marks this appointment.

The Ewing arms are next recorded in Alexander Nisbet’s A System of Heraldry, 1722 (shown above) where they are listed as the arms of John Ewing of Craigtoun WS, who was the ‘Male-Representer of EWING of KEPPOCH, his Grandfather, in the shire of Dumbarton’. Here the Ewing shield appears along with a crest and motto.

Most clans can be identified by a clan badge, which is based on the crest from the chief’s coat of arms, surrounded by a strap and buckle bearing the chief’s motto. For many years, Clan Ewing was a near-solitary exception to this rule, because there was no chief, and no official record of any earlier chief’s crest and motto.

The first record of a Ewing crest and motto is in 1722, but it’s very likely that they were also included in the achievement of arms from 1566. As traditional features of Ewing heraldry, the crest of a demi-lion rampant with a star in its paw, and the motto AUDACITER were adopted as the personal crest and motto of the new chief John Thor Ewing in 2025, giving the clan its first ever official crest badge..