The old coat of arms of Dunaszerdahely
    The newest description of the old coat of arms was given by Jozsef Novak: ‘‘St Peter in blue clothes, in a green field, on a silver shield.” This coat of arms can be seen in Picture 1.
However, the above described coat of arms was based on the seal of the agricultural town shown in Picture 2. But in the coat of arms in Picture 1, included in Altenburger’s seal collection, St. Peter is wearing a red coat over his blue clothes, too. From a heraldic point of view this coat of arms is not suitable to be a town’s coat of arms. The figure of St Peter on the 19th century seal of the agricultural town /Picture 2/ casts doubts if it is a real coat of arms figure or just a pure seal symbol. According to the local heraldic customs of those times only the symbol present on a shield of the coat of arms was approved as a real coat of arms. However, St. Peter doesn’t occur on a shield on any original documents of Szerdahely. Thus, with some daring we can doubt the old coat of arms of Szerdahely being a real coat of arms. On the basis of this we could rank the coat of arms with St Peter among the results of the heraldic eagerness of the 19th century. The final attitude can be taken only after a scientific examination of the relation of seals and coats of arms. Of course we don’t doubt the heraldic correctness of the contents of the old coat of arms.
    In accordance with an 1898 act the OKTB /State Municipality Registration Committee/ was founded to examine the names and coats of arms of the municipalities in the old Hungary. This committee settled the names of municipalities until 1902 and re-classified the towns. This committee united the partly independent villages Nemesszeg, Ujfalu and Elottejed with Szerdahely for good. The committee gave the name Dunaszerdahely to the municipality which resulted from this new union on 9 October, 1899. This same Home Office committee processed the issue of the seals and coats of arms of Hungarian localities. According to ministerial decree each municipality had to order their new official stamp at this committee. At that time each municipality could freely decide if they apply for a seal with coat of arms or just with inscriptiton. Dunaszerdahely ordered a seal with inscription then. The seal was made with the year 1910 on it, when the OKTB endorsed Dunaszerdahely’s order /Picture 3/. We take the case of Dunaszerdahely’s old coat of arms as a closed one, because on the one hand according to the heraldic rules this coat of arms doesn’t meet the idea of a town’s coat of arms, and on the other hand the town renounced the use of this coat of arms - as they probably discovered its incorrectness.
    As Dunaszerdahely became a town again and one of a town’s important social necessities and gems is its coat of arms, the need of a new and this time from a historic and heraldic point of view faultless coat of arms was justified.

The new coat of arms
    Few towns are in such a lucky situation that they can choose their coat of arms from the range of talking coats of arms. Dunaszerdahely belongs to these lucky ones, as the coat of arms suggested by them can perfectly express not only the name of the town, but also its history and its present, keeping the strictest rules of heraldry. This is the heraldic technical description of the coat of arms: ‘‘a split shield with the right field five times divided by blue and gold and with the left red field with the gold sign of Wednesday / Mercurius’ symbol/”.

The symbolism of the new coat of arms
    The design of the new coat of arms expresses the name of the town and its historic past and present at the same time. The coat of arms expresses the name of the town like this: ‘‘The town of Szerdahely, lying along the blue Danube flowing between golden wheat fields.” The blue stripes in the right field of the coat of arms are the heraldic symbols of the blue Danube or the Danube. In heraldry the commonly used colour of grain crops is gold. The gold stripes are to refer to the extensive agricultural production. The six stripes resulting from the division of the field refer to the historic villages which united into the today’s town of Dunaszerdahely, since when Dunaszerdahely was raised to the rank of town in 1960, two more villages - Sikabony /Velke Blahovo/ and Olletejed /Mliecany/ were attached to the four united under the name Dunaszerdahely in 1899. The red field of the shield in the left of the coat of arms refers to the holder of the coat of arms being a town. The red colour can be used in heraldry only in coats of arms of towns in the strictest sense. The symbol in the red field of the coat of arms is the internationally accepted symbol of Wednesday. It was first used in antiquity. In fact this symbol developed into the symbol of Wednesday from the symbol of the Roman god Mercurius. The Romans named the days of the week after their gods. Mercury, the patron of trade and marketers became the god of Wednesday. Wednesday was called Mercury day not only in antiquity, but also in the period of Renaissance and Humanism, when Szerdahely became an agricultural town. The symbol is still used in astronomy. Szerdahely’s first privilege was the right to hold markets on Wednesdays. The sign of Wednesday developed right from the sign of the mythological patron of marketers and traders who was the God of Wednesday at the same time. This way the symbol also expresses the fact from which the name of the town originates: the Wednesday market. Dunaszerdahely has always been a well-known marketplace.

The flag of the town
    The colours of the flag of the town are given by the colours of the town’s coat of arms. Therefore the colours of the coat of arms must appear on the flag according to their arrangement in the coat of arms in the following order: blue, gold, red.
    This is the authentic form of Dunaszerdahely’s flag: The height of the flag is the half of its length. The first third of the field on the right /by the rod/ is blue along the whole height of the flag. The further two thirds are gold in the upper and red in the lower half with the division along the lengthwise axis. A colour drawing of the flag can be seen in Picture 4.
    The flag of the town is used on special occassions; national holidays, local festivals and larger cultural events.