General information

Nazareth is a municipality

Municipality

A municipality is essentially an urban administrative division having corporate status and usually powers of self-government. It can also be used to mean the governing body of a municipality. A municipality is a general-purpose administrative subdivision, as opposed to a special-purpose district...

 located in the Belgian

Belgium

Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

 province of East Flanders

East Flanders

East Flanders is a province of Flanders, one of the three regions of Belgium. It borders on the Netherlands and in Belgium on the provinces of Antwerp, Flemish Brabant , of Hainaut and of West Flanders...

. The municipality comprises the towns of Eke and Nazareth proper. On January 1, 2006 Nazareth had a total population of 10,947. The total area is 35.19 km² which gives a population density

Population density

Population density is a measurement of population per unit area or unit volume. It is frequently applied to living organisms, and particularly to humans...

 of 311 inhabitants per km².

Etymology

There are various hypotheses for the origin of the name Nazareth, dated to a text of songs from 1259 CE. It is possible that Nazareth was named after the biblical city of Nazareth. It is also possible, but less likely, that Nazareth was originally a slip of the word magherhet (thinness).

Heraldry

The arms

Heraldry

Heraldry is the profession, study, or art of creating, granting, and blazoning arms and ruling on questions of rank or protocol, as exercised by an officer of arms. Heraldry comes from Anglo-Norman herald, from the Germanic compound harja-waldaz, "army commander"...

of Nazareth is a composition of two family crests:

The first part is the arms of the family Rockolfing: three gold roses geknopt throat in the field, vert scrolled head and a shield charged with a throat depth and looking round lion of gold, tongued gules.

The second part is the escutcheon of the family Kervyn Volkaersbeke: saber in a twill together right in the head by an acorn, stemmed and browsed in two pieces, left in the mind of a six-pointed star, everything from gold and the one point eagle leg of silver.