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Glossary of Flag Terms

See also:

Vexillological Terminology

by Željko Heimer, 21 May 1996, based on image from WBE

Here is a table partly from World Book Encyclopedia, Vol. F, Flag, p. 193, written by W. Smith, named Flag terms, augmented by contributions from numerous members of the Flags of the World mailing list.

Badge

- see charge

Banner

1. A flag-like cloth draped or stretched between two anchor points, usually bearing a slogan.

2. A flag with heraldic arms placed on it overall (in other words, not in a small shield shape). Often called a heraldic banner. The U.S. state of Maryland is an example.

3. Poetically, any flag carried by a military force.

Battle flag

is carried by armed forces on land.

Battle streamer,

attached to the flag of a military unit, names battles or campaigns where the unit served with distinction.

Bend on

means to attach signal flag to a halyard.

Bicolor

a flag of two colors, usually in equal fields. Bicolors are generally horizontal (such as Ukraine or San Marino) or vertical (such as Malta or the Vatican). The colors are listed top or hoist first (e.g., blue-yellow, for Ukraine).

Bordering

a mostly obsolete practice of edging a flag in a different color than the field, either for decorative purposes or to prevent fraying.

Breadth

a British measurement for flags, is 9" (23 cm) wide. A four breath-flag is 36" (91 cm) wide. The term originated when flag cloth was made in 9" strips.

Breaking

A flag is "broken" when it is hoisted wrapped in a bundle, then broken open to fly free when it is already at the top of the mast or pole. The bundle is made by folding or rolling the flag tightly, then wrapping it with a thin string tied to the lower halyard. When the halyard is tugged sharply, the string breaks allowing the flag to fly. Joe McMillan

Bunting

is cloth decorated with the national colors. The term is also used for the woolen cloth used in making flags.

Burgee

is a tapered flag or pennant, often used by a sailing club, that ends in a swallowtail of two points.

Canadian pale

a pale in the shape of a square, as used on the Canadian flag.

Canton

is the upper corner of a flag next to the staff where a special design, such as a union, appears.

Charge

- an emblem, object, device, or design superimposed on the field(s) of a flag. A coat of arms or simple heraldic device used as a charge is sometimes called a badge.

Civil Flag

The official (or unofficial) flag of the country used by the people, perhaps public flag would be clearer. As opposed to the state flag reserved for the government or the military. A civil ensign is a flag used at sea by private (or any non-government) ships - Nathan Augustine, 1996-09-27.

Color

1. in heraldry, any hue which is not a metal.

2. a flag carried by a military unit as a unit or national identification. Military forces of English-speaking countries often carry a pair of colors, one national or royal and the other of the unit itself. As distinguished from a standard, a color is used by foot units.

French - drapeau
Spanish - bandera (de regimiento)
German - Fahne or Truppenfahne
Italian - bandiera
Russian - znamya
Danish - fane
Dutch - vaandel (Netherlands), vlag (Belgium)
Swedish - segerfanan
Romanian - drapelul de lupta

Commission Pennant (also known as Masthead Pennant, Commissioning Pennant).

a very long and narrow pennant flown from the main mast of a naval vessel, used to indicate the public character of a ship, also called a commissioning pennant, masthead pennant, narrow pennant, coach whip pennant.

French - flamme de guerre
Spanish - gallardete
Russian - vympel
Portuguese - flãmula

Cornet

somewhat similar to a cavalry guidon or standard, i.e. a small perhaps swallow-tailed flag. "Cornet" was an 18th-century junior cavalry officer's rank, e.g. in the Russian Army; the cornet bore the regimental standard. In like manner, the infantry rank of "ensign" applied to the junior officer who carried the regimental colors. Tom Gregg, 6 August 1997

a) a term prevalent in the 17-18thC for small swallow-tailed flags; b) alternative to GUIDON as a term for the standard of a cavalry regiment; c) Cavalry officer responsible for the standard - from a report entitled "The Dictionary of Flag Terminology", by William Crampton, Convenor; David Lister; Louis Loynes; and Miss P.M. Moyce, submitted to the Flag Section of the Heraldry Society of Great Britain (later to become the Flag Institute).

Courtesy flag

is the national flag of the country a merchant ship or yacht visits, hoisted as the ship enters port.

Defacing

differencing a flag by adding something to it, such as a charge, a badge, or writing. Used especially on colonial flags. Note that this term does not have the usual meaning of "vandalizing" when used in vexillology.

Device

is an emblem or design, usually on the fly.

Differencing

the design of a flag as a variation of another flag, either by changing a color, adding or removing a charge, etc. Usually done to indicate a close cultural, historical, or geographic tie. For example, the flag of Italy was differenced from that of France by changing the blue stripe to green.

Dipping

a method of saluting using a hand-held flag. The flagstaff is brought down to an almost horizontal level, with the flag almost trailing the ground, then raised smartly back to its original position. Most only see this on one occasion: the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games.

Ensign

a flag flown at the stern of a ship, primarily for the identification of the nationality of the vessel. The ensign may be the same flag used as the national flag, or a specially designed version of the national flag. Nations may have one ensign or several different ensigns which may be used by various types of vessels (naval/war, state/government, civil/merchant) as well as specially designed flags for various organizations (yacht clubs, customs vessels, coastal authorities, etc.), or indicating a status of a ship's captain or crew (naval reserve). In some countries, the term ensign includes flags not intended to be hoisted on vessels.

French - pavillon
Spanish - pabellón, enseña
German - flagge
Russian - flag, kormovoi flag
Italian - bandiera
Dutch - natievlag
Polish - bandera
Danish - flag
Portuguese - pavilhão

Ensign staff

is the staff at the stern of a ship.

Field

is the background (predominant color) of a flag.

Fimbriation

is a narrow line separating two other colors in a flag.

Finial

the ornament on the end of a flagstaff or flagpole.

Flag

A piece of cloth, varying in size, shape, color, and design, usually attached at one edge to a staff or cord, and used as the symbol of a nation, state, or organization, as a means of signaling, etc.; ensign; standard; banner; pennant. - from Infoplease.com

Flag hoist

is a group of signal flags attached to the same halyard and hoisted as a unit.

Fly

is the free end of a flag, farthest from the staff. The term is also used for the horizontal length of the flag.

Garrison flag,

in the United States Army, flies over military posts on holidays and special days. A garrison flag is 20 feet (6 m) wide by 38 feet (12 m) long, twice as wide and long as a post flag.

Grommet

is a metal ring place along the hoist of a flag to attach the halyard.

Two piece metal grommets were first used in the US about the time of the Civil War or just after. They were usually steel until the late 19th century, when brass began to be used. Except for WWII, brass became common after about 1910. Three piece metal grommets were used between about 1880 and 1920, although never common and usually made of steel.

Ground

is the background of a flag.

Guidon

1. In the U.S. military, a small swallowtail flag used by formations below the battalion level (company, battery, troop, platoon, detachment). It is a small flag carried at the front or right of a military unit to guide marchers.

2. Any small swallowtail.

Halyard

is a rope used to hoist and lower a flag.

Header

a heavy cloth strip, usually canvas, sewn to the hoist edge of a flag and often with grommets for hoisting.

Heraldic Banner

see banner.

Hoist

is the part of the flag closest to the staff. The term is also used for the vertical width of a flag.

Honor Point

the place on a flag where the color or charge with the greatest or highest symbolism is placed -- almost always the upper left.

House flag

a corporate or personal flag; a flag which does not signify nationality or citizenship. Often flown by a merchant ship to identify the company that owns it.

Individual Flag

in military usage, a flag denoting an officer's rank.

Jack

a flag hoisted at the bow of a ship. In navies this is, as a rule, a flag identifying nationality, but not necessarily in the same design as the ensign, while on non-naval vessels, the jack may have other meanings, or be decorative.

French - pavillon de beaupré
German - gösh
Spanish - torrotito, bandera de tajamar
Russian - gyuis
Dutch - gues
Polish - proporzec
Portuguese - jaco, jaque

Jack staff

is the staff at the bow of a ship.

Length

the maximum length of a flag, measured straight from hoist to fly.

Merchant flag

is a flag flown by a merchant ship.

Metal

in heraldry, the colors yellow (or) and white (argent). The rules of heraldry forbid placing color on color, or metal on metal.

National flag

is a flag of a country.

Outrigger pole

A flag pole coming off the side of a building at an angle.
John Niggley, 21 November 2000

Paying off pennant

Since before the Napoleonic wars it has been the custom for HM ships to fly a paying-off pennant at the main truck when they leave their fleet to return to their home port to pay-off. Custom ordains that the length of the pennant should equal the length of the ship if she leaves her station at the end of a normal period of foreign service. If however a commission has been extended, the length of the pennant is increased in proportion to the extra length of service (e.g. ship 480 feet in length that had it's 2 year commission extended to 2 years and 2 months would have a pennant 520 feet long). It is similar to, and flown in place of, the masthead pennant, and is displayed by a ship from a foreign station when entering or leaving harbors during her passage home, and by a ship of the Home Fleet on leaving for and arriving at her home port." Admiralty Seamanship Manual 1951. A hydrogen balloon was sometimes attached to the end of the pennant to keep it flying.
David Prothero, 25 June 1997

Pennant (pennon)

is a small triangular or tapering flag. It is not always easy to distinguish a pennant from a flag. W. Smith stated that "the common denominator distinguishing a pennant from a flag seems to be that the former is always secondary to the latter in importance and differs in shape, proportions, size, and/or manner of display". In naval terms certain pennants have a significance out of all proportion to their size. For example, for the Russian-American Company flag a ship flying the flag was a merchant ship but a ship flying the same flag and a pennant was a warship.
David Prothero, 25 June 1997

Pilot flag (German: Lotsensignal)

is flown from a ship that wants the aid of a pilot when entering port. Before the International Code of Signals was established many maritime countries adopted the practice of using their national (not merchant) flag with a white border as a signal meaning "I require a pilot". I don't know where the practice originated, but Britain adopted a white-bordered Union Jack, called the "Pilot Jack", for this purpose in 1822 (Carr, 1961 p51). Today the International Code of Signals "G" flag (six vertical stripes of three yellow and three blue alternating). Ships under pilotage fly "H" (white and red vertically).
Roy Stilling, 27 October 1996

Port-epee, or dress knot

a knot of rope attached to the sword. National colors may be displayed from the Port-epee.

Post flag,

in U.S. Army, flies regularly over every Army base. It is 10 feet (3 m) wide by 19 feet (5.8 m) long.

Ratio

the relationship of a flag's width to its length, e.g. France is 2:3; Germany is 3:5, Russia is 1:2.

Reeve

means to pull the halyard through the truck, raising or lowering a flag.

Saint Andrew's Cross

a cross from corner to corner of the flag, forming an "X". Also called a saltire. Properly, *the* Saint Andrew's Cross is a white cross on blue, and as such is the civil flag of Scotland.

Saint George's Cross

a cross with arms vertical and horizontal, forming a "+", out to the edges of the flag. Properly, the Saint George's Cross is a red cross on white, and as such is the flag of England.

Scandinavian Cross

a Saint George's Cross, off-centered towards the hoist, as seen in Scandinavian and Nordic flags.

Signal Flags

A set of flags used to signify letters and numbers, hoisted to communicate between ships at sea.

Staff

is a pole a flag hangs on.

Standard

a flag around which people rally. Today, term usually refers to the personal flag of a ruler, such as the Royal Standard of a British monarch.

1) - an identifying flag, equivalent to a color, carried by mounted or similar units.

French - étendard
Spanish - estandarte
German - Standart
Russian - shtandart
Portuguese - estandarte
Italian - stendardo
Danish - estandart
Dutch - standaard (Netherlands), vaandel (Belgium)

2) a flag based on a heraldic shield

3) a flag representing a military unit;

4) the personal flag of a king, president or other high official

in the U.S. military, an obsolete term for the regimental flag used by cavalry regiments.

State flag

is the flag flown by the government of a country. Many state flags are the same as national flags but with the country's coat of arms added.

the official flag of the country used by the government; perhaps government flag would be clearer. As opposed to the flag used by the people or the military (see civil, war and national flag, below). A state ensign is a flag used at sea by government ships. Where they differ from civil flags, state flags often carry a coat of arms.

See Civil flag

in the U.S., Mexico, Australia, and some other countries which have sub-national units called "states", the state flag may also refer to them.

Storm flag,

in U.S. Army, flies over an Army base in stormy weather. It is 5 feet (1.5 m) wide by 9 feet 6 inches (2.9 m) long, half as wide and half as long as a post flag.

Streamer

a long, narrow flag.

Swallowtail

flag which comes to two or three points at the fly end.

Trailing

an uncommon method of saluting using a flag on a pole. The flag is lowered until it just touches the ground for a few seconds, then raised smartly back up the pole. Practiced in some monarchies as a salute to a royal member.

Triband

see tricolor.

Tricolor

a flag of three stripes, usually equal in size, arranged either horizontally (such as the Netherlands or Lithuania)

or vertically (such as France, Italy, or Belgium).

Those arranged vertically are sometimes called tribands. Some similarly-arranged two-color designs (such as Canada and Peru) are also called tricolors.

Truck

is the wooden or metal block at the top of a flagpole below the finial (staff ornament). It includes a pulley or holes for halyard.

Union

is a design that symbolizes unity. It may appear in the canton, as the stars do in the U.S. flag. Or it may be the entire flag, as in the Union Flag of the United Kingdom.

Vexilloid

a rigid sign carried on a pole, especially those used by ancient Roman legions as unit identifiers; the forerunners of modern flags.

Vexillology

is the study of flag history and symbolism. The name comes from the Latin word vexillum, which means flag. The word was coined by Dr. Whitney Smith of the Flag Research Center.

War ensign

a flag flown by a naval vessel. See Ensign

War Flag

The official flag of the country used by the military.

War Pennant

See Commission pennant.

the *height* of a flag along the hoist, just to be confusing...

British usage of the term ensign

To further confuse things, the British custom is often to refer to the civil ensign as the Merchant Naval ensign, and the White ensign as the Royal Naval ensign. This dates from times when Britain was still a powerful enough seafaring nation to have a governmental freight navy ("The Merchant Navy"). The term 'merchant navy' is still sometimes used to refer to British based trading vessels.
James Dignan, 30 September 1996

I believe merchant ships continue to wear the Red Ensign on such duty, unless, of course, they meet the conditions of having a captain a certain percentage of the officers holding commissions in the Royal Naval Reserve, in which case they would be entitled to wear the plain Blue Ensign instead. Though given the perilous state of our merchant fleet today I wonder if any merchantmen still qualify for that privilege..
Roy Stilling, 30 September 1996

The title 'Merchant Navy' was awarded by King George V in 1922 as an honorific in recognition of the work done by Britain's merchant fleet during the First World War. There is no blanket provision for the wartime requisition of British-registered flags. This is done by arrangement with individual companies or by legislation.
Edwin King, 17 March 1998

Another table from the same source gives Interesting facts about flags:

The first "flags" consisted of symbols attached to the tops of poles. Such flag like objects appear in Egyptian art of the mid-3000's B.C.

Cloth flags were probably first used in China about 3000 B.C. These flags were made of silk.

Knights in the Middle Ages carried pointed flags called pennons. A knight's promotion to a higher rank was symbolized by having the end of pennon cut off. The resulting square flag was called the banner, and the knight become a knight-banneret.

National flags are among the most recent kinds of flags. They first came into use during the 1700's in Europe and North America. Until then, most flags stood for the personal authority of rulers.

Flags at sea. Before the days of radio, a complicated system of flag design and display grew up around the need for communication at sea. Flag codes enabled the sending of messages between ships or from ship to shore. A ship would salute another vessel by dipping, or lowering, its flag. Such salutes played a major role in international diplomacy.

Flag colors. Most national flags use one or more of only seven basic colors. These colors are red, white, blue, green, yellow, black, and orange.

Flag symbols often reflect historical events. The cross that appears in many European flags originated in the flags carried by Crusaders to the Holy Land. Some flags used in Arab nations show the eagle of Saladin, a Muslim warrior who fought the Crusaders in the 1100's.

Burning is considered the most dignified way to destroy a flag that is no longer fit for display. But burning a usable flag often signifies political protest.

The following is from WorldWide Words newsletter:

3. Weird Words: Vexillology

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The study of flags.

It may seem surprising that such an odd-looking word for an obscure field of study should have gained acceptance, but it's relatively common and is recorded in most recent dictionaries (they have to be fairly new, since the word was coined only in the 1950s). The word comes from the Latin 'vexillum' for a flag, which derives from the verb 'vehere', to carry (from which we get 'vehicle' as well). A related Latin term was 'vexillum', for a body of men grouped under one flag. This suggests that the original Latin referred to a flag that was carried rather than flown from a mast. Someone who studies flags is a 'vexillologist', and the adjective is the mildly tongue-twisting 'vexillological'. These two terms may be modern, but the Latin root turns up in a number of obscure terms, such as 'vexillator' for a banner-bearer in a mystery or miracle play. 'Vexillum' is also used in modern botany for the large external petal of a legume flower.

Edward Smith, 13 November 1999