A Digression in Vexillology

24 Jan 2020

A while back, I spent an entire evening categorizing the world's flags into different categories in a spreadsheet - because I literally had nothing better to do. I saw a lot of similarities between flags, and though I'm sure there are interesting historical reasons, I was more interested in exploring the current state of flags in the world.

The data

I decided to limit my dataset to the 193 UN member states, because defining what a country is is not as easy as it sounds, and this makes for a reasonably complete list. It covers the area marked in green:

It does have some notable exceptions:

• England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland which are only members as part of the United Kingdom
• Western Sahara, which is a disputed territory
• Palestine, which has a decent flag
• The Vatican, which doesn't

Stripes

128 (66%) of all flags in the world have stripes. Exactly 100 (52%) of the flags have horizontal stripes, 35 (18%) have vertical stripes.¹

Only 7 (4%) countries have both vertical and horizontal stripes:

• Belarus
• Benin
• Central African Republic
• Guinea-Bissau
• Madagascar
• Oman
• United Arab Emirates

You can see why this is not a popular option.

57 (30%) countries have exactly 3 horizontal stripes, and 23 (12%) have exactly 3 vertical stripes.

Most stripey

Whereas no country has more than 3 vertical stripes (that would be insane), Malaysia and the US are tied for first place in the horizontal stripe race:

Country	Horizontal Stripes
Malaysia	13
USA	13
Liberia	11
Greece	9
Uruguay	9
Zimbabwe	7
Uganda	6

15 countries technically have 5 stripes, although only Costa Rica, Cuba, Thailand and Togo properly have 5 stripes.

• Botswana
• Eswatini
• Cape Verde
• Israel
• Kenya
• Costa Rica
• Cuba
• Mozambique
• North Korea
• Thailand
• Republic of The Gambia
• South Sudan
• Suriname
• Togo
• Uzbekistan

The others are basically wannabe 3-stripers but with little gaps between the main stripes. Israel is the most subtle which really does look like 3 stripes, but actually has white stripes at the top and bottom:

Only the Central African Republic, Comoros and Mauritius have 4 stripes, Mauritius being the only plain 4-striped flag in the world.

Stars

There are a total number of 273 stars on all of the country flags, spread out among 72 (37%) of the countries.

Unlike in the stripes department where the US had to settle for a tie, when it comes to stars the US with its 50 stars absolutely destroys its competition with just under twice as many stars as the runner up, Brazil which has 27. Brazil in turn has more than twice as many stars as Uzbekistan which scanters into third with a measly 12 stars.

Country	Stars
USA	50
Brazil	27
Uzbekistan	12
Cape Verde	10
Dominica	10
Tuvalu	9
Bosnia and Herzegovina	9*
Venezuela	8

42 (22%) of the flags have but a single star.

Seeing stars

I thought counting stars would be at worst boring, provided more flags looked similar to the US flag. Boy was I wrong, what counts as a star?

• Argentina and Uruguay have suns on them, they count as stars right?
• Antigua and Barbuda and Bosnia Herzegovina* feature half stars - I decided to count them as full stars and not use any decimal points.
• Costa Rica among others feature small stars inside the emblems of their flags, I counted them like any other.
• India looks like it might have a star, but it's actually a wheel

Look at the dataset to see how I got the final tally.

Crosses

13 (7%) countries have a cross on their flag.

The following have the Scandinavian off-center cross:

• Denmark
• Finland
• Iceland
• Norway
• Sweden

And the rest have a symmetrical cross:

• Dominica
• Dominican Republic
• Greece
• Malta
• Switzerland
• Tonga
• United Kingdom

Georgia really likes crosses and has 5:

Cantons

13 (7%) other countries have a canton on their flag:

• Australia
• Chile
• Fiji
• Greece
• Liberia
• Malaysia
• New Zealand
• Samoa
• Togo
• Tonga
• Tuvalu
• Uruguay
• USA

I personally don't think that any of these are particularly good, except for Liberia which is a nicer and cleaner version of the US flag. Slim down the number of stripes (without going too far like Chile), replace the star extravaganza with a single classy star, and make the square actually square and a more tasteful size, much better:

Though Liberia has one of the nicer country flags in the world, this pedigree does not trickle down to its 15 counties.

Maps

Only one of the UN Member States has a map of their own country on their flag, Cyprus:

I think it's brilliant.²

Though they are not members of the UN, I still want to mention the flag of Kosovo, and Graham Bartram design of the flag of Antarctica, which I also really like:

Toplist

These all make my list for basically the same reason: I think that they are all the best examples of very popular and traditional flag designs, while at the same time being unique and having their own twist to them, making them both instantly recognizable, familiar, but also memorable and clearly distinct from the many other similar flags out there. World class.

They are of course my personal opinion and nothing else.

Honorable mentions: United Kingdom, South Korea, Guyana, Jamaica

1. South Africa

By far my favourite, excellent colours and shapes.

2. Norway

The best of the Scandinavian crosses, followed by Iceland which has the colors flipped, the other ones have pretty poor color choices in my opinion.

3. Congo

Simple 3 stripes African colors, but diagonally - beautiful.

Bottomlist

I don't know if I even have to put a disclaimer here saying that this is only my personal opinion, because these are truly terrible flags.

Dishonorable mentions:

• Nepal which isn't even shaped like a flag
• Sri Lanka which has two flags in one - one okayish and one awful
• Turkmenistan which rolled out a rug on its flag

1. Haiti

When you use MS Paint to put a picture with a white background in the middle of your flag, should you really have one?

2. Lebanon

It'd be difficult to let this one stay up on the fridge for long even if drawn by your own child.

3. Maldives

This one is just dreary - the border is too wide, the moon is too narrow and the colors are depressing. It also happens to be the single flag in the world which has a moon but not a star. Based on this flag, you clearly need a star if you have a moon.

Sources

• Dataset - I created this myself by going through all the flags filling it in. It was a great night.
• UN Member States
• Every single world flag

Spot a mistake? Please let me know and I'll fix it and credit you in the post.