House of Names is a surname product peddler. They sell coats of arms(they use the misnomer family crest)like they belong to everyone with the same surname and they don't.
There is absolutely no such thing as a family crest. A crest is part of a coat of arms. Coats of arms do not belong to surnames and actually they don't belong to families in most country and this is particularly true for Scotland. In some countries you can have civil charges brought against you for displaying a coat of arms without proof that it belongs to you. In Scotland you can have criminal charges brought against you for displaying a coat of arms without documented proof that you are the individual to whom it belongs. They do have clan badges in Scotland but you would have to trace your family history to determine what specific clan to which you belong and the clan badge.
Several years back I read of a man in Scotland who had a coat of arms as a stained glass window. He was told to remove it by the Lord Lyon of Scotland. He didn't and officials from the Lord Lyon went into his home and removed it leaving him with a big drafty hole in his wall that he had to cover up.
The surname product business is a big racket. In the U.S. we have no laws regarding heraldry and a person can get by displaying any coat of arms they wish but to do so is identity theft.
Actually House of Names has this in small print on their website. No doubt it is because when a person discovers the coat of arms really isn't theirs they can bring mail fraud charges against House of Names if they sell you a coat of arms and send it to you by mail.
"tWe encourage you to study the ________ family history to find out if you descend from someone who bore a particular family crest . . . . . . . . No families, not even royal houses, can make sound claim to the right to bear arms unless a proven connection is established through attested genealogy records."
Here is a link to the Lord Lyon of Scotland
http://www.lyon-court.com/lordlyon/216.181.html
The fact that they belong to individuals is also true of England and Wales. In Ireland, they have arms that have been granted to individuals and they have clan arms but a person just can't go by their surname to determine what their clan arms is.
Actually to find your family history you must research it starting with yourself and working back one generation at a time. Don't get overly involved in tracing your surname. Get as much information from living family as possible. Find out if any has any old family bibles. Ask to see and make copies of birth, marriage and death certificates. Depending on the religious faith, baptismal, first communion, confirmation and marriage certificates from their church can be helpful. Interview your senior members and tape them if they will let you. They probably will start telling stories of bygone days you wouldn't write down but what you might think would not be significant might later turn out to be very significant.
People who have done this say they have gone back and listened to the tape again after doing research and hear things they didn't hear the first time around.
A good source is a Family History Center at a Latter Day Saints(Mormon) Church. They have records on people all over the world, not just Mormons. In Salt Lake City, they have the world's largest genealogical collection. Their FHCs can order microfilm for you to view at a nominal fee of about $3.
I have never had them to try and convert me nor have I heard of them doing that to anyone else that has used their resources. Just visit their free website, FamilySearch.org, to get the hours for the general public to the nearest Mormon FHC.
There are lots of websites. Look for the ones that have records, not necessarily family tree. Information in family trees on any website are not submitted by some experts working for the websites but by folks like you and me, the subscribers. There are errors. You frequently will see different info on the same people from different subscribers.; Then you will see the absolute same info on the same people from different subscribers, but that no way means the information is correct. Too many people copy without verifying. The information can be useful as clues only as to where to get the documentation. Genealogy websites are not a good place to find information on the living as that can be an invasion of privacy and can lead to identity theft.
I believe the very best for the amount of records they have online is Ancestry.Com. Still you must distinguish between the records they have obtained and put online and their subscriber submitted family trees. If you find it too pricey your public library might have a subscription to it you can use for free.
When I go into their website, I prefer to go under Old Search as I can pick out specific records I want to check. It might be wise to use it for awhile at your library and get use to it as they have so much it can be overwhelming to someone new to the site.
If you run into a brickwall and come back and ask a question giving as much info you have as possible such as name, place and approximate time period. There are people here with resources and they frequently can help others.
Here is a link with 50 links to other websites, some free, some fee. Some I find are good but those that only have family trees I wouldn't spend too much time using.
http://www.progenealogists.com/top50genealogy2008.htm