Canting arms

Canting arms are heraldic bearings that represent the bearer's name (or, less often, some attribute or function) in a visual pun or rebus.

Many armorial allusions require research for elucidation because of changes in language and dialect that have occurred over the past millennium.

Canting arms – some in the form of rebuses – are quite common in German civic heraldry.

[citation needed] An in-joke among the Society for Creative Anachronism heralds is the pun, "Heralds don't pun; they cant.

Municipal coats of arms which interpret the town's name in rebus form are also called canting.