Mr. E. B. Tylor, in his "Early History of Mankind," says--"More than twenty years ago, Sir George Grey called attention to the divisions of the Australians into families, and distinguished by the name of some animal or vegetable, which served as their crest or _kobong_." He adds--"The Indian tribes" (of America) "are usually divided into clans, each distinguished by a _totem_ (Algonquin _do-daim_, that is 'town mark,') which is commonly some animal, as a bear, wolf, deer, etc., which may be compared on the one hand to a crest, and on the other to a surname."
Indeed, until very recently, some of our own regiments had their "beast totem" in the shape of a goat, a bear, or a tiger, which generally marched at the head of the corps. The goat, I believe, yet survives, and the men of one regiment are designated "tigers" to this day.
The crest is evidently one of the oldest, if not the oldest, forms in which the beast symbol was displayed. The bronze Roman helmet, or rather bust or head of Minerva, found at Ribchester, in 1796, had originally a sphinx as a crest. This appendage, however, having become detached, has since been lost. The gladiators' helmet decorations, in the pictures found at Pompeii, are generally plumes or tufts of horsehair, but some of their shields exhibit devices suggestive of those of more recent date. The Roman historians, recording the events pertaining to the great Cimbri-Teutonic invasion rather more than a century before the Christian era, state that each of the fifteen thousand horsemen, which formed the élite of the army of Bojorix, "bore upon his helmet the head of some savage beast, with its mouth gaping wide."
Osman, the son of Ertoghrul, was the founder of the Turkish empire (A.D. 1288-1326). One writer (Pen. Cyc.) says--"The name Osman is of Arabic origin (Othman), and signifies literally the bone-breaker; but it also designates a species of large vulture, usually called the royal vulture, and in this latter acceptation it was given to the son of Ertoghrul."
The Rev. Isaac Taylor, in his "Etruscan Researches," referring to the origin of the tribal "totem" of the Asena horde, afterwards named Turks, says--"It is not difficult to discover the genesis of the legend. It has been already shown that the ancient Ugric word _sena_ meant a 'man.' The analogy of a host of ancient tribe-names leaves little doubt that the Asena simply called themselves 'the men.' This obvious etymology of the name having in lapse of time become obscure by linguistic changes, the word _schino_, a wolf, was assumed to be the true source of the national appellation, and the myth came into existence as a means of accounting for the name of the nation which proudly called itself the 'wolf-race,' and bore the wolves' heads as its 'totem.'"