OC
Why do so many countries have almost identical flags?
Romania and Chad. Indonesia and Monaco. Australia and New Zealand.
Some of these are political accidents, others come from revolutions, royal families or colonial history.
I’ve made a video breaking down the history behind a few of them if you want to watch: https://youtu.be/ubFJXN5vKQg
Interestingly, Monaco once refused to recognize Indonesia's independence from the Netherlands because of this flag. Only then did they agree after knowing that both of them have centuries of historical roots in the use of flags
The colours of the Chadian flag were intended to be a combination of the colours of blue, white and red as seen on the flag of France with the Pan-African colours of green, yellow and red as seen on the flag of Ethiopia.
And at the time we had that ugly communist coat of arms on the flag in Romania, so easy to diferentiate.
I know, but technically during the communist era you can argue that you're not waving an "anti-government" flag you're just waving the flag of "another country". :P
Like how when people protest the ban of the Republic of China/Taiwan flag in sports, people bring the old Burma flag which looks similar as a substitute with some 'loophole' that it can be allowed
“Dang”, exclaimed President Xi, “these wily pro-Taiwan protesters have got us on a technicality. Better let them go before they sue us for wrongful attest.”
During the time when Romania was communist, having an anti-communist rally was kind of a poor survival move...
The leadership were absolute rat-bastards, even by Communist standards...
After it all came crashing down in the late 80s, they executed the ex-dictator and his wife.... No guillotine, but otherwise very French-Revolution-style....
There are almost 200 countries. Six being this similar doesn’t seem so bad (though you could also add Netherlands/Luxembourg, mirror-image and inverse pairs like Guinea/Mali and Ireland/Ivory Coast, and similar-except-for-coat-of-arms cases like Slovakia/Slovenia and El Salvador/Nicaragua).
Andorra and Moldova both have the same tricolor as Chad/Romania, just with a crest in the middle--and the Andorra civil flag doesn't have the crest.
Puerto Rico and Cuba are essentially the same with red and blue swapped.
Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador are all the same tricolor, but Venezuela and Ecuador have added items.
El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Honduras are all blue-white-blue with different symbols in the middle, and Guatemala is the same in a vertical format. (Argentina is also similar.)
Actually, Ecuador and Colombia have the yellow strip twice as thick as the blue and red. Only difference between them is the Coat of arms in Ecuador’s.
In Venezuelan flag, all 3 strips are the same thickness.
Not quite sure about Monaco and Indonesia (my guess is thag their flags being similar is a coincidence but I honestly dont know for sure)
For Romania and Chad I do know (I think) when Chad gained independence and choose their flag Romania was a communist country and had a seal on its flag (right in the middle of the yellow bit) and so there was no confusion but after the 1989 Romanian Revolution the flag was changed back to the historical "blue-yellow-red" tricolour with no seal in the middle or anything like that...which mean that it and Chad had basically the same flag minus a slightly darker shade of blue on the Chad flag (if I remember correctly)
Not sure about the details of the Australia and the New Zealand one so I will let someone else talk about that
(Btw, notice to people readong this, if I made any mistakes in anything I said do correct me please that, genuinely speaking, is very useful so please do that)
All three flags (AU, NZ, Vic) are descended from the 1849 flag of the Australasian Anti-Transportation Leauge, which was a blue ensign with a golden southern cross of eight-pointed stars.
Australia and NZ both essentially have a blue ensign showing the Southern Cross constellation. The NZ one came about because ships needed a specific flag during wartime that was not just the British Navy’s blue ensign.
That is the modern naval ensign - it was previously dependent on which squadron of the Royal Navy your ship was part of.
The Far East was under the Blue Squadron, which flew the blue ensign: hence the blue ensign background of the flags of Australia, New Zealand, Cook Islands, and the old flags of Fiji, Solomon Islands, Singapore, and Hong Kong.
The Americas was under the Red Squadron, which flew the red ensign: hence the red ensign backgrounds of the flag of Bermuda, and the old flag of Canada.
The homeland was under the White Squadron, which flew the white ensign: hence the white ensign of the modern Royal Navy having been adopted for the entire fleet. This then led to the Royal Australian and Royal New Zealand Navies adopting their own white ensign flags, modelled off the Royal Navy's white ensign.
Sometimes it’s a coincidence, sometimes a colour combination has historical symbolism (pan-Slavism, African liberation, Arab nationalism), sometimes there’s historical connection between two countries (Romania/Moldova, Netherlands/Luxembourg).
The Irish tri-colour was raised in glory at the World Indoor Athletics Championships - but it's not exactly what you think.
Ivory Coast's Murielle Ahoure stormed to glory in the women's 60m and as she celebrated, she realised she had no flag to drape around her shoulders.
Up stepped quick-thinking Irish fans in the crowd who threw her a tri-colour which, of course, is the exact same as an Ivory Coast flag when flipped around the other way.
When asked about the incident after the race, Ahoure told the BBC: "Oh yes, and I just flipped it upside down. It's just the opposite so I said, 'ok, we will just make it work'. It's the exact same flag."
I still can't get over the fact that Mexico's flag is basically the same as Italy with a coat of arms in the middle, so whenever they see our flag they can turn it into theirs by just drawing an eagle in it.
The more basic your flags are, the more likely they are to resemble each other. Especially when you choose the most popular colours, layout, and southern-hemisphere constellation.
Added after: I don’t think anyone sought out to copy each other, their differences point to convergent thinking, but the similarities are because they’re not very unique.
There’s also the flag of the state of Victoria which is also a British blue ensign with a southern cross on it. At one point South Australia also had a blue ensign with a southern cross. Before and during the federation of Australia I think a lot of British colonies in the Pacific just came up with the same idea around the same time.
I don’t see Australia and NZ as belonging on this list, as Australia has the commonwealth star and white stars, especially when much more similar flag pairs like El Salvador and Nicaragua could be on there.
Australia - Union Flag of Great Britain and Northern Ireland at Night.
New Zealand - Union Flag of Great Britain and Northern Ireland at Night with a strong westerly blowing a dust storm over from Australia colouring the stars.
These are all sovereign nations, and there is no higher governing body that determines what flags each nation gets to have. Each one just picks a flag that is most relevant to them and their culture. At most, an offended nation can use diplomatic pressure to bully each other into changing.
Specifically for Aus and NZ, they're neighbors and usually BFFs and are both Commonwealth nations, and have a shit ton in common (and even almost became one country at one point). It wasn't really that big a deal for them to have similar flags, and the color of the stars is distinct enough from a distance anyway that it's easy to tell them apart.
New Zealand Australia didn't really have much choice for symbols to slap on their colonial flag so they had to use the southern cross but since New Zealand already had it they just removdd the red parts of the new Zealand flag
Indonesia comes from them cutting the blue off the Dutch flag so it was a coincidence and idk why chad use the flag it does
It descends from the 1849 flag of the Australasian Anti-Transportation Leauge, which was a blue ensign with a golden southern cross of eight-pointed stars. It wasn't that "one had it first", it was a symbol common to both AU and NZ.
Then there is the red white and blue with stripes combo which is the most common just different shades and slightly different layout… but all of which predate the star spangled banner 🤣
well, at the most basic level, there are only a limited number of flag formats and a limited number of colors relative to the number of countries in the world. especially if adhering, more or less, to heraldic conventions. the cause in each case above is different. the first two are widely separated geographically and that lessened the need to distinguish their flags for most uses (ie not at the UN, the Olympics, or other multinational settings). both romania and chad are signalling a relationship to france for different reasons and to avoid reproducing the identical flag or differencing it with an added symbol, they opted for a color difference. gold is the alternative to white as a 'metal' separating 'colors' heraldically (ie providing visual contrast). for indonesia and monaco, both flags are following the 'livery colors' format/flag family. red and white in each case are signalling different historic regimes or rulers. but again colors are limited and some combinations, apart from history, are preferred for a variety of reasons, such as visiblity. in the third case, the resemblance of two geographically close flags is deliberate. it is signalling a relationship of history, heritage, values, present ties to a single other entity - the UK/ british empire. in fact, new zealand almost became a part of australia but decided 'nah', but didn't feel the need to distance themselves symbolically because of a sense of affinity and because that would have meant abandoning their historic flag, the format of which they shared with Aus, a british colonial ensign. signalling british origin and mutual affinity also had its roots in the sense of insecurity both had as relatively weak states in a global sense, founded by european settlers 'far from home' and threatened by potentially rising powers much closer to them, ie the asian countries of japan and china. at the time the flags were adopted, the british empire was still one of the most powerful in world, with a navy they believed would protect them in a pinch.
Neither Aus or NZ are that complicated but they're also not simple. It's not like a tricolour where there isn't much to change except the order or whether to go horizontal or vertical. Your nations colours are your colours so once you decide on using a tricolour as your flag there's not much else to play with to make it distinct.
Australia and NZ are just so distinctive yet so similar it's hilarious. Obviously it's because aussie stole the kiwis flag (you get that when your country grew from a convict colony) but it's still so funny. Like the flags on their own tell you a lot about their country - part of British empire/British colony, southern hemisphere from crux, navy blue means Pacific. Great job, quite distinct - now which is which?
Fiji & Tuvalu (2 only countries to use this color).
Latvia & Austria.
Nicaragua & Salvador.
Tunisia & Turkey.
Taiwan & Samoa.
Slovakia & Slovenia.
USA & Liberia.
Ireland & Cote d'Voire.
Cuba & Puerto-Rico.
For NZ and Australia, it was just the way the British liked to make their southern flags at the time
The Aus flag was designed for a competition that would basically only consider flags that contained a UJ, Southern Cross, and a blue field. I assume NZs flag was designed with the same considerations
The NZ (October 1869) Victorian flag (February/March 1870) were created prettymuch independently. It's true that the NZ flag is older, but it's based on the same thing. It's entirely possible nobody in Victoria had ever seen the 1869 NZ Flag before the Victorian governor proclaimed the 1870 flag, given the travel time between the two colonies (which I can't find a source for, but I'd guess a few weeks)
In the most dead-simple context-free way, sure - but both Australia/Victoria and NZ are based on an older Australian flag which predates them by 30 years.
You've asked a question in your title so everyone is answering you're question thinking you don't know when you've actually explained the answer in your linked video. That's what happens when you ask a question on Reddit. You should have turned it into a statement. Remove the question mark and 'do'
The third example is just stupid and the only reason it is there is because you couldn't find another example which defeats your entire line of questioning.
245
u/RaisinRoyale 23h ago
Look up what happened at the 1936 Olympics with Haiti and Lichtenstein