Large, heavy, slow hounds were "talbot-like", whatever their colour, though the "milk white" was "the true talbot".

In a quotation from about 1449, the king referred to John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury as "Talbott, oure good dogge", perhaps as a play on his name, or in allusion to that family's heraldic badge.

[6] In a 1445 illuminated manuscript in the British Library[7] John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury is depicted presenting a Book of Romances to Queen Margaret of Anjou, with a short-legged and long-eared white hound standing behind him, which serves to identify him symbolically.

[9][1] It is quite plausible that from these beginnings the name "Talbot" was extended to any large, heavy, white scent hound, and from there helped to establish a breed or type.

This refers to Simon de Sudbury (c.1316–1381), Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor of England, born in the town, whose coat of arms was A talbot hound sejeant within a bordure engrailed, as is visible sculpted in stone on a wall in the nave of the Canterbury Cathedral.

The Talbot Hound was also the symbol of Weston Road High School in the county town of Stafford, Staffordshire.

An inn called The Talbot in Iwerne Minster, Dorset, U.K., showed as its sign a black dog, apparently the crest of the Bower family, who owned the manor from the late Middle Ages till 1876.

[14] The "Talbot Inn" in Mells, Somerset is an allusion to the arms of the Horner family of Mells Manor: Sable, three talbots argent, the arms being possibly a play on the surname as hunting hounds are controlled by the blowing of horns.