17 April 1589, A fragment of a vignette with the arms of Old Warsaw on a document of the Polish king Zygmunt III, restating the privileges granted to the City of Old Warsaw of revenue from inland and riparian customs duties on goods transported through the city.

1652, Coat of arms of Old Warsaw on the cover of an accounting book of the city.

15 February 1599, Imprint of the seal of the City of Old Warsaw with the city's coat of arms on a document in which the mayor and council of the city sponsor the Holy Trinity altar in the Collegiate Church of St. John.

The Polish word for a coat of arms or heraldic device, herb, was adopted from Czech, where the original form erb had a double meaning of "heritage" and "armor." The Czechs borrowed the word from the German language, where the original form Erbe means "heritage." The etymology for coats of arms in the Western European languages is somewhat different. There the identification function and genesis of heraldry are revealed by names related to armor, for example arma, arms (or coat of arms), armoires, or Wappen (which used to have the same meaning in German as Waffen).

The origin of the coat of arms of Warsaw, like the beginnings of the city and its name, has long been a subject of hypotheses and legends. Until the latter part of the 17th century the arms were presented in a figure combining human features with those of a fanciful bird-fish-dragon creature. In the second half of the 17th century, and especially in the 18th century, the figure lost some of the more fanciful features and approached the image of the contemporary siren or mermaid, a woman with a fish's tail and fin.

The oldest existing armed seal of Warsaw is from the year 1390. It is a round seal bordered with the Latin inscription Sigilium Civitatis Varsoviensis. In the middle, against a background of vegetal ornamentation, there is a cartouche showing a figure with a human head wearing a helmet, human arms attached to the torso of a bird, a lion's tail and the hooves of a bull. In its arms it holds a round shield and a sword.

During the 16th century, the male torso on the Warsaw arms was replaced with a female torso, the helmeted head disappeared, and there appeared dragon wings at the hips and a lizard tail.

The first mermaid (fish-woman) with a sword and shield appeared in 1622, but it is not known exactly how the transformation from half-man/half-bird to the present arms took place.

Until 1791, up to the administrative consolidation of Warsaw, the mermaid was the emblem only of Old Warsaw and two districts under its jurisdiction, Solec and Mariensztat (from 1781). The City of New Warsaw and remaining districts had separate arms, for example the arms of New Warsaw were a maiden with a unicorn.

The first regulations concerning the appearance of the arms of Warsaw come from 1798, during the Prussian occupation. The arms presented half naked people with maces, holding a heraldic shield with a mermaid, with a Prussian eagle on the mermaid's shield.

In 1811, during the period of the Duchy of Warsaw, the seals of the city adopted the official emblem of the Duchy, the Saxon-Polish Arms. Later, when the Russian partition included Warsaw, the city was deprived of the right to use historical arms, and the state seal was used.

1602, Fragment of the title page of an accounting book of Old Warsaw with the image of the city's coat of arms.	27 III 1648, Imprint of seal with the coat of arms of the city on a document for sale of a garden in New Warsaw, on Zakroczymska Street.	1665-1660, Ex libris with figure of the coat of arms of Old Warsaw on the cover of an accounting book of the city.

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