Flag families
Flag families are sets of national flags with similarities in their design, often based on a shared history, culture, or influence. Families do not include flags with coincidental similarities. Flags may be in multiple flag families. Only twelve current national flags existed before the 19th century, when large-scale flag use began. Seven of these flags (Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Russia, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America) are the inspiration for more than 130 current national flags and ensigns.[1]
Christian cross
A Christian cross flag is any flag with a cross or crosses as a central element of its design (as opposed to flags like those of Malta and Serbia, which use crosses as smaller embellishments). It is the oldest flag family. The first flag purported to have such a cross was the flag of Portugal, beginning in around 1100.[2] The flag design became the most common design for merchant ships across Europe for several centuries.[3] Flags in this family use different types of crosses, including the Latin cross (†), the Greek cross (✚), and the Maltese cross (✠). (The Maltese cross does not appear on Malta's national flag, only its civil ensign.)
Nordic cross
Flags in the Nordic cross family feature crosses stretching the width and length of the flag, with the center offset to hoist. The cross design represents Christianity;[4][5][6] Denmark was the first to adopt this design in the 14th century. As the oldest national flag in continuous use,[7] the flag of Denmark served as inspiration for other Nordic countries as they adopted theirs. Though the design is strongly associated with Nordic countries, cities and territories outside the region use this design. Greenland is the only Nordic region that does not use the Nordic cross.[8]
Crescent
Flags with crescents are recorded as being used in the region of Middle East and North Africa as early as the 14th century.[9] These designs often featured a white crescent open toward the top on a solid-colored field. During the 19th century when national flags became common, the Ottoman Empire was the only Muslim state considered a world power.[10] Its flag popularized the crescent design for other Muslim nations when they later adopted flags.[3] Most Muslim crescent flags also have one or more stars near or within the circle formed by the crescent. The crescent on the flag of Singapore, which is not majority-Muslim (though it has a large Muslim minority and is surrounded by majority-Muslim Malaysia), represents "a young nation on the ascendant".[11]
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Flag of Azad Kashmir (disputed territory)
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Flag of Northern Cyprus (disputed territory)
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Flag of Western Sahara (disputed territory)
British Ensign
The British Ensign family is composed of flags with the
Stars and Stripes
The stars and stripes flag family is composed of flags of alternating stripes with a field in the hoist (often the canton) charged with an emblem (often, but not always, a star or stars). Early versions of the flag of the United States were based on ensigns of the United Kingdom, with the Union Flag on the canton. Instead of a solid-colored field, they had stripes inspired by the flag of the East India Company. In 1777, the Continental Congress of the United States resolved to replace the Union Flag with thirteen stars.[15] The first nation to adopt a similar flag was the Hawaiian Kingdom,[16] and many other nations wanting to express ideals of liberty and democracy followed suit.[3]
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Flag of Abkhazia (partially recognized republic)
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Flag of Brittany (region of France)
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Flag of Puerto Rico (unincorporated territory of US)
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Flag of Hawaii (state of US)
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Flag of West Papua (proposed country)
Dutch and pan-Slavic colors
Dutch and pan-Slavic colors are a family of flags, usually with red, white, and blue stripes, inspired by the Dutch and later Russian flags. The first flag of simple stripes were the
Tricolours and tribands
A tricolor is any flag following the flag of France in its design of three vertical stripes of equal width, each distinct in color. On the eve of the French Revolution, 13 July 1789, red and blue cockades were given to the militia of Paris. Soon afterward, Louis XVI added one to his royal white cockade.[21] These colors, arranged as stripes, became the flag of France in 1794. In this way, vertical tribands of three colors became associated with movements for republicanism and were adopted by many nations transitioning to republican governance.[3] (however, some monarchies also used, and still use, tricolours). Unlike tricolour, the triband design may contain two identical colors, such as flags of Nigeria and Peru.
A number of triband flags have a central band that is exactly twice the width of others, a design known as Spanish fess (horizontal) or Canadian pale (vertical). On some flags, this is not the central band, such as for Colombia or Rwanda.
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Flag of Latvia (2:1:2)
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Flag of Andorra (8:9:8)
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Flag of Lesotho (3:4:3)
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Flag of Tajikistan (2:3:2)
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Flag of Mauritania (1:3:1)
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Flag of Belize (1:8:1)
Pan-African
Flags in the pan-African family use a combination of some or all of the colors red, yellow, green, and black. Some pan-African flags also have white and, less commonly, blue, but these are not considered[by whom?] pan-African colors. The design of flags in this family vary considerably. The colors red, yellow, and green became associated with pan-African colors through the Ethiopian flag.[22] Black was later added by Marcus Garvey, an activist and organizer for the first black unification movement in the United States.[23] Inspired by the pan-African colors' growing association with post-colonial independence, many countries in the Caribbean and the Guianas with large populations in the African diaspora also adopted pan-African colors.[24]
Ethiopian flag family
Marcus Garvey and Theodosia Okoh families
Marcus Garvey inspired two independent sets of national African flags. In 1917, he proposed a red, black, and green flag for his organization, known as the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League.[23] According to Garvey,[29]
Red is the color of the blood which men must shed for their redemption and liberty; black is the color of the noble and distinguished race to which we belong; green is the color of the luxuriant vegetation of our Motherland.
These three colors were the inspiration behind the
Pan-Arab colors
The pan-Arab flag family is a set of flags featuring three or four of the colors red, black, white, and green. The flags have three horizontal stripes, often with an emblem in the center or an overlapping shape in the hoist. According to biographers of Muhammad, he used both flags of white and flags of black.[34] Each color of the pan-Arab flags is associated with a caliphate of Islam. White and black flags were used by the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties respectively.[35] Although green is often identified as the color of the Fatimid dynasty by vexillological sources,[36][37][38] that is not correct: their dynastic color was white.[39][40][41] Green is now considered the color of Islam.[36] Red was the color of the Hashemites.[35] These colors were also described by the 14th-century poet Safi al-Din al-Hilli: "White are our deeds, black are our battles, green are our ranches, red are our swords."[42]
In 1911, members of a Turkish literary club chose these four colors as the colors of the modern Arabic flag.[3] The colors were combined in the flag of the Arab Revolt in 1916, and many countries adopted these colors as the colors of their national flags upon gaining independence from the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I.[43]
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Flag of Somaliland (disputed territory)
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Flag of Western Sahara (disputed territory)
Iranian colors
Iran adopted a flag with green, white, and red stripes in the mid-19th century.
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Flag of Kurdistan (disputed territory)
Gran Colombia
The Gran Colombia flag family is made up of flags of countries in the former area of Gran Colombia. They have three horizontal stripes of yellow, blue, and red. Venezuelan revolutionary leader Francisco de Miranda personally designed the flag of Gran Colombia, a historic state that included modern Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Venezuela, and parts of Brazil and Guyana.[46] The flag of Gran Colombia had three colours symbolizing Hispanic America (yellow), the Atlantic Ocean (blue), and "bloody Spain" (red).[3] Miranda attributed the inspiration for these colors to a late-night conversation with the German writer and color theorist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who is described as saying[47]
Yellow is the most warm, noble and closest to light ... blue is that mix of excitement and serenity, a distance that evokes shadows ... red is the exaltation of yellow and blue, the synthesis, the vanishing of light into shadow.
The flag of Gran Colombia was first hoisted in 1806. It led to the current designs of Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela.[3]
Belgrano
The Belgrano flag family is composed of flags of
Red banner
The red banner flag family is the family of flags that use large red fields or
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Flag of Transnistria (disputed territory)
Trucial States
Trucial State flags are a flag family from the southern and eastern coasts of the Persian Gulf. They consist of red flags with white stripes, cantons, or borders. Red is a traditional color of the Kharijite Muslims who lived in this region, and they historically used all-red banners.[55] It was the British who added the white to the flags of the region. When the region became a British protectorate in 1820, the treaty drafted by the United Kingdom said[56]
the friendly Arabs shall carry by land and sea a red flag, with or without letters in it, at their option, and this shall be in a border of white...
Instead of borders, most of the states adopted a stripe. Nearly all of these states are now member emirates of the United Arab Emirates. While the flag of the United Arab Emirates is not a Trucial States flag, the flags of the individual member emirates still are. In the 1930s, the independent countries within the Trucial State flag family, Bahrain and Qatar, both adopted serrated edges from their earlier straight-edge designs.[57] The flag of Qatar is unique in the Trucial State flag family for having a darker shade of red or maroon, a color made using traditional shell-based dye from the area.[58]
United Nations
The United Nations flag family includes the
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...flag use did not develop on a large scale until the 19th Century and continued during the 20th Century. Out of some 195 independent countries, only 12 have flags whose designs were adopted before 1800. Seven of these (Denmark, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Russia, the United States, France and Turkey) have influenced the designs and colors of over 130 national flags and ensigns...
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Many predominantly Christian states show a cross, symbolising Christianity, on their national flag. The so-called Scandinavian crosses or Nordic crosses on the flags of the Nordic countries–Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden–also represent Christianity.
- ISBN 9781862871885. Retrieved 31 December 2007.
The Christian cross, for instance, is one of the oldest and most widely used symbols in the world, and many European countries, such as the United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Greece and Switzerland, adopted and currently retain the Christian cross on their national flags.
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Legend states that a red cloth with the white cross simply fell from the sky in the middle of the 13th-century Battle of Valdemar, after which the Danes were victorious. As a badge of divine right, Denmark flew its cross in the other Scandinavian countries it ruled and as each nation gained independence, they incorporated the Christian symbol.
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...white was also the color associated with the Fatimid caliphs, the opponents of the Abbasids.
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