Words for Nerds - Vexillology
Do you have any idea what vexillology means? If you do, you are a championship caliber Word Nerd. I had to look it up. Which of these do you think is the correct definition?
A. The study of why people can be so gosh darn vexing.
B. The science of mixing drinks; bartending.
C. The study of flags.
D. The practice of black magic or devil worship.
Students of ancient history or Latin may recognize that vexillology is rooted in the Latin word, vexillum. In Imperial Rome, a vexillum was a military standard used by military detachments, consisting of a banner suspended from a pole. Even in Roman times, its use was rather limited.
Today, the term is used more broadly to describe the study of flags. Flags are fascinating not only from an historical point of view, but as a form of communication; branding at its most powerful. If a picture tells a thousand words, a flag tells ten thousand.
What words come to mind when you see —
1. The American flag
2. The Union Jack
3. The flag of the American Red Cross
4. The Hammer & Sickle (Soviet flag)
5. The Confederate flag
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Well, no, I’m stumped on this one!
Brad,
Personally, I don’t think about flags particularly often, and am very poor at recognizing flags of individual countries. I wish I had studied more about flags back in school.
However, when you look deeper at the meaning of each of the symbols or features of a particular national flag, they do tend to say a great deal about the identity of the nation in question.
But flags can also be misleading. In the case of the Australian flag (my home country), the symbols are the Union Jack, representing historic links with England, the southern cross (stars in the southern hemisphere) and the federation star, representing federation in 1901.
At no point are the indigenous people of Australia (aborigines) represented on our national flag at all, despite a connection with the land believed to go back about forty thousand years.
This is because, shamefully, until 1967, only white Austrailians were officially counted as citizens.
Cheers
Andrew
Andrew, surprising news about the aborigines not being citizens until 1967. Of course, omitting them from the flag is not unusual, I suppose.
I’ve often thought the Australian flag should be altered slightly to provide some small aboriginal related symbol or recognition.
I wonder whethe flags of other Commonwealth or former Commonwealth countries incorporate representation of indigenous peoples on their flags?
Cheers
Andrew
Did you know that the Union Flag ( Union Jack) is a mix of the flags of Scotland, England and Wales? We Scots are also proud to fly our blue cross of St Andrew on its own.
I was interested to read Andrew’s post about Australia and yes it would be good to understand how the flags of other Commonwealth countries were/are made up.
Maybe we can get a vexillologist onto it.
Jackie, That’s interesting about the history of the Union Flag (explains its name!). I’m no vexillologist, but I looked online for a while to check on Andrew’s inquiry and found nothing. You’d think somewhere there would be research on the subject.