"The name [banneret] imports the bearer of a small banner,
and, in this respect, he differed from the baron, who bore a
gonfanon or banner of war, and the simple knight, who bore a
penon. The banner, properly so called, was a square flag; the
penon, according to the illuminations of ancient manuscripts,
was a small square, having two long triangles attached to the
side opposite that which was fixed to the lance or spear.
These pendant portions resembling tails were so denominated.
Rastal defines a banneret to be a knight made upon the field
of battle, with the ceremony of cutting off the point of his
standard, and so making this like a banner. And such, he says,
are allowed to display their arms on a banner in the king's
army, like the barons. That was, no doubt, the mode of
creation; but it appears … that a knight, or an esquire of
four bacelles, or cow lands, and therefore, a bachelor, to
whom the king had presented a banner on his first battle,
became a banneret on the second; so that, in such cases, there
would be no such ceremony necessary."
_R. T. Hampson.
Origines Patriciœ,
chapter 11._