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Romania

România

2:3 , by Antonio Martins

About the flag
- Colours of the flag
- Likeness to other blue-yellow-red flags
An Erroneous Romanian Flag

See also:

Romania: Index of all pages

About the flag

A blue-yellow-red vertical tricolour. Adopted 27 Dec 1989 (do we know what legislation?). Smith (1982) mentions that the first tricolours were allowed in 1834 by the Ottoman sultan, that in 1848 the tricolour (but not in current in "French" pattern) was popularized and finally officially adopted in 1859. The tricolour has been used since as national flag, war ensign (also state flag?) with coat of arms, and the vertical version was adopted in 1866 (Mario Fabretto, FOTW). After WWII, in 1948 all the variants of the flag (civil, state, military) were defaced with the emblem ("coat of arms") that was changed several times and finally cut out (literally) and plain tricolour was re-established in 1989.
Zeljko Heimer, 21 December 2002

The Constitution of Romania, adopted on 21 November 1991, effective on 8 December 1991, says:
Title I: General Principles
Article 12. National Emblems
1. Romania's flag is a tricolour, consisting of vertical stripes: blue, yellow, and red, in this order, from the mast.[...]
4. The coat of arms of the country and the state seal are established by statutory laws.
Source: Vagnat & Poels (2000). Constitutions - what they tell us about national flags and coats of arms
Ivan Sache, 23 December 2002

Colours of the flag

From the Romanian flag page at: http://domino.kappa.ro/guvern/ehome.nsf/All/Drapelul

The national flag of Romania is a tricolour: red, yellow and blue. It has not undergone many or major changes in the course of history. Only the distribution of the colours (in point of proportion and position) changed to a certain extent, being made equal after the Revolution of 1848 when, under the spur of the French revolutionary spirit, many states in Europe adopted as their national flag the dimensionally standardised three-colour banner.

Sigillography attests that at certain historical stages, the Romanian flag had the three colours arranged horizontally with the red in the upper part, the yellow in the middle and the blue in the lower part. Also, the proportion of the colours was not the same as it is now (33 per cent for each colour).

Basically, however, the three colours so dear to the Romanians are to be found in banners dating back to the time of Michael the Brave and even Stephen the Great. Moreover, recent research indicates that they existed even on the Dacian standard presented on Trajan's Column in Rome. This standard was of a special form: a bright metal wolf's head hanging from which were long coloured bands of cloth.

As the wind blew, the standard gave a whiz that scared the enemy and encouraged those who carried it in battle. In critical moments, hiding the standard so that it should not be taken by the enemy was a custom common with several peoples, including therefore the Dacians, the Daco-Romans and the Romanians. Such a hidden standard was the one belonging to Tudor Vladimirescu, the leader of the 1821 revolution. When the revolution was stifled, Tudor's chieftains decided to bury the standard in a courtyard.

Only 60 years later, in 1882, was the standard found, reconditioned and brought to Bucharest, the capital of the country, being deposited, in the framework of a special ceremony, at the Army House (today the Central Military Museum).
The 1821 revolution Tudor Vladimirescu helped the country get rid of the Phanariot rulers imposed by the Ottoman Empire in Wallachia and Moldavia in the early 18th century (the Phanariot rulers came from the Phanar district of Constantinopole and were aliens imposed on the country by the Sultan as mere administrators).

The flag, the standard, the banner are profound symbols, connected to history, to the resistance of the people and the secret of their survival.

The Romanian tricolour (the colours red, yellow and blue are to be found also in Romania's coat of arms) resisted, as a symbol, even after the advent of communism in this country, when the entire heraldry of the USSR's satellites was reduced to a caricature. In the course of time, poems and hymns were dedicated to the Romanian tricolour; one of these, Three Colours, on music by Ciprian Porumbescu, has been very mobilising and is one of the most liked by the Romanians.
The flag of Romania has the colours placed vertically as follows: blue (hoist), yellow (in the middle) and red (fly). The width of each colour band is one-third of the length. The blue is cobalt, the yellow-chrome and the red-vermillion.

Dov Gutterman, 01 January 1999

Colours recommended for the Romanian flag by Album des Pavillons (2000) are:

Zeljko Heimer, 18 August 2003

I have a friend who is in Romania. He said that the yellow and red seem to have been standardized; however, there is a great variance in the shade of blue. He has seen anything from a blue as light as that used in the flags of Israel and South Africa to as dark as that of the United States flag.
Calvin Paige Herring, 1 January 1999

Likeness to other blue-yellow-red flags

Four countries use blue-yellow-red vertical tricolour flags: Moldova, Andorra, Chad and Romania. The Moldovan flag is distinguished by the addition of the Moldovan arms, but the colours are obviously related to and similarly derived as those of Romania. The flag of Andorra is based on the French flag, but with the addition of yellow from the Catalan or Spanish flag; it also bears the arms. The blue-yellow-red colours of Chad are a combination of the blue-white-red of France, the former colonial power, and the green-yellow-red of the Pan-African (e.g., Ethiopian) ones. The Chadian flag is therefore essentially identical to the Romanian flag. Album des Pavillons (2000) distinguishes the blue in the Chadian flag as being darker (closer to that of the French flag) as Pantone 281c (CMYK 100-70-0-35).
Zeljko Heimer, 18 August 2003

An erroneous Romanian flag

When the Aero-show took place in 1993 in Paris the flag manufacturer wanted to know about the new flag of Romania. I had just received the message that the Romanian parliament had decided to show the coat of arms in the flag. So I informed the manufacturer. He handed that design to another manufacturer, and he produced that flag. And in Paris all the Romanian flags had the coat of arms in it. A week later I was informed that the parliamentary decision was deleted (for several reasons, one was the costs). But it was too late. The flags flew, and soon I received the information from several vexillologists that Romania had a new flag.
Ralf Stelter, 27 June 1999