After two years of research and creative thinking, designer Jonn Galea has completed his goal of designing modern heraldry for the 100 most common Maltese surnames.

Galea is the brains behind kunjom.com, a project he started two years ago, seeking to re-imagine the coats of arms of Maltese surnames through modern design sensibilities.

He was originally inspired by a Times of Malta interview with linguist Mario Cassar, who revealed that 75 per cent of Maltese people share the same 100 surnames.

Despite having a busy year in his professional life, Galea said he enjoyed coming back to the project recreationally.

“Heraldry brings together a lot of things I’m personally interested in, imagery, colour and design.

“I’m big into history so it drew me in. There is a history, and it follows rules, so I did have to take some artistic licence, but all in all I found that all the things I like doing are amalgamated into one in heraldry.”

Each coat of arms took Galea time to research, and he had to consider different options when coming up with a final design when there is a dearth or even conflicting information on one given name.

“Heraldry in itself is a very studious and academic subject and a lot of people who are into it are not really supportive of the project because it’s modern and not exactly official,” he said.

Discussing his own surname of Galea, growing up he had always thought of his family’s crest as one of blue topped with a Roman helmet but, upon researching it, found that the one registered with the heraldry office in Malta is different.

He also found that in other heraldic traditions, such as the British, different families with the same surnames often distinguished themselves with different coats of arms.

I’ve come across a few surprises along the way- Jonn Galea

“Because Malta is so small, it’s challenging to differentiate and so it’s easy to attribute a coat of arms to a certain surname which ultimately in theory could have been different for every family,” Galea said.

Some of the most challenging designs to come up with were coats of arms that included human figures, he said, because illustrating them is more complex, citing the wild man in Debono, Hercules in Grixti and the Neptune in Cauchi.

“Creatively, those are trickier,” he said.

Jonn Galea is the brains behind kunjom.com.

“In general, when discovering the meaning of surnames, I do my research, but I always take it with a pinch of salt and I’ve come across a few surprises along the way,” Galea continued.

“But ultimately, it’s fun to take license with these Maltese-isms. I’ve lived abroad for a long time and my culture is still in my heart, so I have fun with it.”

Galea has also been selling prints of the coats of arms he creates, with all the proceeds donated to charity.

“When I started out, there was already some interest in having prints made, but I’m at a point in my life where I have a good job and this project was never something I set out to make money from.

“It was my wife who actually suggested we give all the proceeds from the prints to charity, so we’ve been choosing family-oriented charities, which we thought would be fitting since surnames are connected to families.”

In 2023, the Galeas donated €600 to the Food Bank and €400 to the Richmond Foundation thanks to sales made from prints.

Now with his original goal completed, Galea said his next steps include continuing to expand the site by researching even more surnames and making the whole project more accessible by creating a version of the site in Maltese.