The coat of arms belongs to a family related to my maternal family: family Onou (Onu), descendants of the Străjescu Moldavian boyars and noblemen in the Russian Empire, in the second half of the 19th century.
Mikhail (Michel) Onou (1835-1901) worked as a secretary and dragoman of the Russian consulate in Adrianople, of the Consulate-General of Constantinople (1857-1859), of the Consulate-General in Beirut (1859-1863), head of the archives and of the library of the Department for Asia in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, General Secretary and first dragoman, then advisor to the Russian Embassy in Constantinople (1869-1879), Minister Plenipotentiary of Russia in Athens and State Advisor in the Russian Empire. He was married to Louise Alexandrovna Baroness of Jomini, grand-daughter of General Antoine-Henri, Baron of Jomini, famous fighter and military strategist. In the next generation, the members of Onou family became relatives by marriage with Princes Troubetzkoy, with Princes Shakhovskoy and with Counts Chreptowicz-Bouteneff.
The coat of arms belonging to Michel Onou was rediscovered and reconstituted by the heraldist Tudor-Radu Tiron, according to the description found in the collection Общий Гербовник дворянских родов Всероссийской империи, часть 14, стр. 167 (translated from Russian into Romanian by Silviu Andrieş-Tabac):
In an azure damasked shield with silver edge, an open silver scroll. Above the shield there is a helmet with a noble crown. Crest: two buffalo horns, crossed; the right one of silver and azure, the left one of azure and silver. Azure and silver lambrequins.
If, in terms of genealogy, the Onou family doesn’t have any living descendants and is extinct, bringing to light the history of this dynasty of Romanian diplomats and the reconstruction of their coat of arms shows us that a family is truly gone only when its history disappears. And that a story dies only if it is forgotten, when there is nobody left to pass it on and nobody left to listen to it.
I put my project of rescuing the memory of the old Romanian families under the protection of the coat of arms belonging to the diplomat and erudite Michel Onou, and I will do my best to continue writing the history started on the charter on the Onou coat of arms.