Why London Pubs Are Called What They Are

Published 9 November 2026 · By the Guide to London editorial team · Editor: Terje Moy

Most London pub names come from a handful of old sources: the badges and coats of arms of kings and great families (the Red Lion, the White Hart, the Crown), the trades whose workers drank there (the Coopers Arms, the Bricklayers Arms), religious symbols (the Cross Keys, the Lamb and Flag, the Mitre), and famous people and events (the Lord Nelson, the Princess Louise). The signs are pictures because, for most of the history of the English tavern, most customers could not read.

Once you know the categories, a walk through London becomes a little history lesson. A pub called the White Hart is carrying a royal badge of the 1390s. An "Arms" is a coat of arms, not a weapon. And "Ye Olde" on a sign tells you more about Victorian marketing than about the age of the building.

This page explains the names and the signs. For the buildings themselves, our guide to London's historic pubs covers the oldest, and our field guide to Victorian pub interiors explains what is inside them. The pubs named below are examples of a naming tradition, not recommendations.

Why a pub sign is a picture

Taverns and alehouses in medieval England needed to be found by two kinds of people: customers, and the officials who tested the quality and price of the ale. A law of 1393, in the reign of Richard II, is the one usually quoted as requiring anyone brewing ale for sale to hang out a sign, on pain of losing the ale. Whatever the exact wording, the habit was general long before most of the population could read.

So the sign had to work without words. A red lion, a bell, a ship or a pair of crossed keys could be described, remembered and given as a direction: "turn left at the Bell". Shops of every kind used the same system, and streets were full of hanging boards long before houses had numbers. Pubs are simply the trade that kept the habit.

That is why the name and the picture are the same thing. A pub called the Swan is a pub with a swan on its board. When a pub is called something that cannot be drawn, it is usually a modern name, or an old one that has been reworded.

Heraldry: kings, badges and the Red Lion

The largest group of old names comes from heraldry. A great lord's followers wore his badge, and a tavern on his land, or one that wanted to show its loyalty, could hang it outside. When the lord was the king, the badge spread across the country.

The White Hart is the clearest case. It was the personal badge of Richard II, who reigned from 1377 to 1399. The National Gallery's description of the Wilton Diptych, painted for Richard, says he probably inherited the emblem from the white hind used by his mother, and that it may also be a pun on his name, "Richart" in French. On the outside of the painting a white hart wearing a gold crown and chain lies on a bed of flowers, and the angels inside wear white-hart badges. The painting hangs in the National Gallery (Room 51 when we checked in November 2026), and it is the best place in London to see where a common pub name began.

The Red Lion is usually said to be the most common pub name in Britain. Two explanations are commonly given: the badge of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster in the fourteenth century, and the red lion of Scotland, which arrived in English heraldry with James I in 1603. Neither can be proved for a particular pub, and many Red Lions are simply named after older Red Lions. The Crown, the King's Head and the Rose and Crown are declarations of loyalty to whoever was on the throne.

What "Arms" means, and the livery companies

A pub called the Something Arms is named after a coat of arms. In the countryside that is usually the arms of the family that owned the land; in London it is just as often the arms of one of the City's livery companies, the medieval trade guilds that still exist as charities and dining societies.

The Coopers Arms takes its name from the arms of the Coopers' Company, the guild of barrel-makers, a trade that every brewery and wine merchant depended on. The Bricklayers Arms takes the arms of the Tylers and Bricklayers. A pub near a trade, or one that its workers used as a meeting place and a place to find work, took the trade's arms as its name. Our guide to the livery halls explains the companies and when their buildings open.

Some trade names have nothing to do with heraldry. The name Two Chairmen refers, by the usual account, to the two men who carried a sedan chair, the hired seat on poles that was London's taxi in the eighteenth century. The name records a job that has vanished entirely.

Religious names from before the Reformation

Many of the oldest names come from the Church, which ran inns for pilgrims and travellers and owned a great deal of land. The Cross Keys are the keys of heaven given to St Peter. The Lamb and Flag is the Lamb of God carrying a banner with a cross, a symbol of Christ; it is also the badge of the Middle Temple, one of the Inns of Court described on our page about Temple Church and the Inns of Court. The Mitre is a bishop's hat, and the Angel needs no explanation.

Religious names did not all survive the Reformation, when Henry VIII broke with Rome in the 1530s and the monasteries that owned many inns were dissolved. A few survive because of the site rather than the symbol: the Black Friar at Blackfriars was named, and decorated, in honour of the Dominican priory that stood there until 1538.

Heroes, royals and events

From the seventeenth century onwards, pubs were named after the news. The Royal Oak remembers the oak tree in which Charles II hid after his defeat at Worcester in 1651. The Lord Nelson and the Duke of Wellington spread after the victories of 1805 and 1815; Nelson's column, the subject of our page on Trafalgar Square, belongs to the same wave of hero-worship.

The Marquis of Granby, a general of the Seven Years' War, is usually said to have so many pubs because he helped his old soldiers set up as publicans. It is a good story, often repeated, and we have not found a primary source for it.

Victorian builders and brewers named new pubs after the royal family as a matter of course. The Princess Louise on High Holborn is named after Queen Victoria's fourth daughter, who was also a sculptor. Names like these date a pub fairly reliably: nobody named a pub after Princess Louise before she was born in 1848.

"Ye Olde" and the Victorian taste for age

"Ye" in "Ye Olde" was never pronounced "yee". Medieval English had a letter called thorn, written þ, for the "th" sound. Early printers, who had no thorn in their type, often used a "y" in its place, so "þe" ("the") was printed "ye". "Ye Olde" simply means "the old".

The phrase was revived in the nineteenth century, when old England became fashionable, and it spread through the twentieth century wherever a pub wanted to look ancient. On its own it proves nothing. Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street really was rebuilt after the Great Fire, but plenty of pubs with the same prefix are Victorian or later.

The same caution applies to the date painted on the board. "Established 1520" or "Rebuilt 1667" is the pub's own claim. For a listed building, the reliable date is in Historic England's list entry, which often disagrees.

Signs today: listed, regulated and repainted

Many London pubs still hang a painted board on an iron bracket, and some of those brackets are as old as the building. When a pub is listed, the protection covers the whole building, and the list entry may name its signs. Historic England's entry for the Black Friar records an elaborate wrought-iron sign with a lamp above each entrance, and a mosaic band spelling out the pub's name and drinks.

A few signs are listed on their own. The best example in London is the Cock sign on Sutton High Street, listed at Grade II in April 2018: an early twentieth-century lamp post carrying a swinging board with a painted cockerel, which has outlived the pub it advertised. It is described on our page about Sutton and Carshalton.

The board itself is usually repainted every few years, so the picture you see is rarely old. A new or altered sign is treated as an advertisement under planning law, and on a listed building a change that affects its character needs listed building consent as well. That is why the boards on old pubs change slowly, and why the pictures on them tend to stay within the tradition.

The name on the board and the name on the licence

Every pub in England sells alcohol under a premises licence issued by the council. The Licensing Act 2003 requires the holder to keep the licence at the pub and to display a summary of it prominently. Look near the bar or the door and you will usually find it: it names the licence holder and the premises, and the hours the pub may sell alcohol, which may be later than the hours it actually opens.

The name on the sign is a trading name chosen by the owner, and it can change. Brewers and pub companies rename pubs when they refurbish them, and in recent decades many old names have been swapped for jokey or modern ones and sometimes swapped back. A name that has survived several owners usually has a story behind it.

Four names to read on a London walk

These pubs illustrate the categories above. All were checked on the Food Standards Agency register in November 2026; ratings change at every inspection, and our page on how food hygiene ratings work explains how to check again.

The two Chelsea pubs are a few minutes apart in the streets behind the river, covered in our guide to Chelsea. Whatever the sign says, the manners inside are the same everywhere, and our guide to pub etiquette explains them.

Frequently asked questions

What is the most common pub name in Britain?

The Red Lion is usually said to be the most common, followed by royal names such as the Crown and the Royal Oak. The lion is heraldic: it is commonly linked to John of Gaunt in the fourteenth century or to James I after 1603, though no single explanation fits every pub of that name.

What does "Arms" mean in a pub name?

It means a coat of arms. A pub called the Coopers Arms or the Bricklayers Arms is named after the coat of arms of a trade guild, while one named after a family, such as the Somebody Arms, usually stands on land that family once owned or carries its heraldry.

Why do pubs have picture signs?

Because for most of their history most customers could not read. A picture of a lion, a bell or a pair of keys could be recognised, remembered and given as a direction. A law of 1393 is usually quoted as requiring ale-sellers to display a sign, and the tradition outlived the reasons for it.

How do you pronounce "Ye Olde"?

As "the old". The "y" stands in for an old English letter, thorn, which made the "th" sound. Early printers replaced it with a "y" because their type had no thorn, and the spelling was later revived to make pubs and shops look ancient.

Sources

• The National Gallery - The Wilton Diptych (checked November 2026)
• Historic England - The Cock sign on Sutton High Street, list entry 1450261, Grade II (checked November 2026)
• Historic England - The Black Friar Public House, list entry 1285723, Grade II* (checked November 2026)
• legislation.gov.uk - Licensing Act 2003, section 57 (checked November 2026)
• legislation.gov.uk - Town and Country Planning (Control of Advertisements) (England) Regulations 2007 (checked November 2026)
• Food Standards Agency - food hygiene ratings: Red Lion, 2 Duke of York Street SW1Y 6JP; The White Hart, 29-30 Cornwall Road SE1 8TJ; The Coopers Arms, 87 Flood Street SW3 5TB; Cross Keys, 2 Lawrence Street SW3 5NB (checked November 2026)