Arms: Azure, issuant from middle base three stalks of millet Or, on a chief indented argent three mullets of four Azure.
Crest: A bull head couped argent, upon its head a poppy or in a flower pot azure.
Motto:Gæþ a wyrd, swa hio scel (Fate goes ever as it must)
Design Rationale:
Blue represents the armiger's Italian heritage on his paternal side (i.e. Savoy Blue) and blue and white present his Scottish heritage on his maternal side (i.e. St. Andrew’s Cross). Blue and gold are the official colors of the State of California. The millet is a canting of the last name Panick, which was originally Panichi in Italian. The scientific name of millet is panicum and an archaic word for millet in Italian in panico. There are several examples of arms of Italian families named Panichi which include millet. The number of stalks symbolizes the armiger’s three children.
The chief is indented to combine the wavy line division with the shape of an inverted chevron. These are related and both symbolize the armiger’s work in linguistics. First, the wavy division relates to sound waves since phonetics and phonology is his main interest and the inverted chevron shape is derived form the diacritic haček found about the Hoocąk (Ho-Chunk aka Winnebago) letter <ň> which represents a very unique sound in that language and which was the sole focus of his M.A. thesis. The white chief also represents aspiring to live virtuously.
The mullets also combine two symbols. They have four points due to their resemblance to crosses and therefore point towards the armiger’s Christian faith and job teaching theology at a Catholic school. However, he chose stars to represent his strong personal sense of fate, which connects motto “Gæþ a wyrd, swwa hio scel” (Fate goes ever as it must) taken from Beowulf line 455. The motto is left in Old English because of my study of linguistics and original interest in historical linguistics and because my BA final project was studying and translating Old English. The stars also represent astronomy and so combined with the Christian element represents both faith and reason. The bull and flower represent the story of Ferdinand the Bull, which is a story that I really love and many in the armigers family have drawn parallels between them and Ferdinand. The flower is a poppy to represent California.
