The Puncher surname
When I met a man at a fair
In 1996 I was at a local craft fair when I saw someone from a heraldry company selling surname
histories and family coats of arms. Now I know this sort of thing triggers hot debates about whether
there is really such a thing as a family coat of arms, and 'proper' heraldry people would probably
want to nail this guy to a tree, but you've got to start somewhere. Needless to say, despite half an
hour of frantic cross-referencing he couldn't come up with anything, much to the amusement of the
large queue of people now behind me. So a deal was struck, money changed hands, and this was what arrived in the post a month later.
The Surname Puncher Other variants include Punchard, Pinchard, etc:
From the Old
Norman French 'Ponchard' and the Old French 'Ponsard', a diminutive of Ponce, the name of a saint
(Pontius) of Asia Minor whose cult was widely spread in the Middle Ages.
An early example appears as Robert Puncard in the Pipe Rolls of Oxfordshire in 1230. Later we have
Geoffrey Puncard in a Calender of inquisitiones post mortem of Berkshire in 1265 and Mary Puncher
in a marriage with Robert Reeves at St. James, Clerkenwell, London in 1681.
The arms blazoned hereon appear in Rietstap Armorial General of 1889, and are vert a cross couped or
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