The griffin, wolf, and deer, these common motifs of the 9th and early 10th centuries, rarely appear in later Hungarian iconography and heraldic symbolism.

However the hawk or Turul, a symbol in shamanistic lore that rested upon the tree of life, connecting the earth, the netherworld, and the skies, endured for a longer period as an emblem of the Hungarian ruling house.

[8] King Attila's banner bore the image of the bird the Hungarians call Turul, with a crown on its head, and this emblem he carried on his own shield.

In fact, until the time of Duke Géza this flag was always carried with the Hunnish army, as long as they had a communal style government.The double cross, a symbol of royal power, appeared during the reign of King Béla III of Hungary (1172–1196).

Béla was raised in the imperial court of Manuel due to the close Byzantine-Hungarian relations of the mid-12th century, and he was even the heir to the throne.

[12] In 1169, Manuel's young wife gave birth to a son, thus depriving Béla of his status as heir of the Byzantine throne.

[10][11] The royal charters issued by monarchs were authenticated by seals and bulls, making them the most important sources for the medieval history of Hungarian coats of arms.

[10][12] The red and white stripes were the heraldic symbol of the House of Árpád, first appeared in 1202, in the coat of arms of King Emeric's (r. 1196–1204) seal.

In the large coat of arms, however, a laurel wreath replaced the crown both in the central piece and above the shield, as shown on the adjacent image.

The adjacent image shows the medium coat of arms, in official use (with some modifications) from the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 till the end of World War I (1918).

The outer pieces (anti-clockwise from top left) are the coats of arms of Dalmatia, Slavonia, Bosnia (added in 1915), Fiume, Transylvania, and Croatia.

The Hungarian Republic of Councils in 1919 totally abolished the traditional coat of arms and used the communist five-pointed red star on official documents.

In old newsreels, the Kossuth badge can be seen painted onto the turrets of many revolutionary tanks fighting against the Soviet invasion in the streets of Budapest.

A new coat of arms was created in late 1957, incorporating a more traditional heraldic escutcheon (bearing the Hungarian red-white-green tricolor) into the wreath-and-red-star framework of socialist heraldry.

The liberal, opposition party (Alliance of Free Democrats, SZDSZ) proposed the Kossuth-style "Republican" version but the conservative government backed the historical, crowned one.