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The first Lord Home, who died in 1491 had the crest of a doe head as part of his arms. And this was carried through the next four Lord Homes, the fifth died in 1575. The sixth Lord Home changed it to a lion’s head by 1591. After he was made first Earl of Home, he seems to have added the motto ‘Treu to the end’ (Willam Rae MacDonald, Scottish Armorial Seals, 1904, 172). This remained the crest of the Lords Home through the 1690s. Alexander Nisbet records in the 1720s the addition of the cap of maintenance, and the additional motto, ‘A Home, A Home’, a traditional war cry of the kindred.
‘A’ in Scots means something like ‘for’, so the cry essentially means ‘For Home!’. Almost all families did the same for their surnames, but with this family it had the double meaning of, literally, ‘home’.
The cap of maintenance was something borne by chiefs to reflect their noble status.
Why a lion’s head? Unclear. Traditionally the Homes had carries a silver lion on a green background on their shield, but their crest lion head natural colours. Presumably the sixth Lord Home wanted something that expressed his loyalty to the king of Scots, and was also somewhat more intimidating than the doe used by so many of his predecessors.