A national flag is a flag that represents and symbolizes a country. Flags come in many shapes and designs, which often represent something about the country or people that the flag represents. Common design elements of flags include shapes such as stars, stripes, and crosses, layout elements such as including a canton (a rectangle with a distinct design, such as another national flag), and the overall shape of a flag, such as the aspect ratio of a rectangular flag (whether the flag is square or rectangle, and how wide it is) or the choice of a non-rectangular flag. Sometimes these flags are used to represent languages.
Many countries with shared history, culture, ethnicity, or religion have similarities in their flags that represent this connection. Sets of flags in this list within the same category may represent countries' shared connections, or the design similarity may be a coincidence.
Notably, the Union Jack features in many territorial and sub-national flags usually based on the Red Ensign (e.g., Bermuda) or Blue Ensign (e.g.,
New South Wales). The British Ensign in a few cases have backgrounds of other colours (e.g.
British Antarctic Territory and
Niue) or a unique pattern in the field (e.g.
British Indian Ocean Territory and
Hawaii). Some flags put the Union Jack somewhere other than the canton (e.g.
British Columbia). Unofficial flags, such as
Ross Dependency also use it.
Historically
Historically
Most common aspect ratio is 2:3, followed by 1:2.
The following flags have a distinctive aspect ratio:
A dependent territory, dependent area, or dependency is a territory that does not possess full political independence or sovereignty as a sovereign state and remains politically outside the controlling state's integral area. As such, a dependent territory includes a range of non-integrated not fully to non-independent territory types, from associated states to non-self-governing territories.
Each entry below presents a list of topics about a specific nation or state (country), followed by a link to the main article for that country. Entries for nations are in bold type, while those for subnational entities are in normal (unbolded) type.
A federacy is a form of government where one or several substate units enjoy considerably more independence than the majority of the substate units. To some extent, such an arrangement can be considered to be similar to asymmetric federalism.
This is a list of lists on the cities of present-day nations, states and dependencies. Countries are listed in bold under their respective pages, whereas territories and dependencies are not. Disputed and unrecognized countries are italicized.
This is a list of articles covering the history of present-day nations, states, and dependencies. Countries are listed in bold under their respective pages, whereas territories and dependencies are not. Disputed and unrecognized countries are italicized.