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.
Additionally, the Union Jack features in many territorial and sub-national flags. These are often Red Ensigns (e.g., Bermuda) or Blue Ensigns (e.g., New South Wales and Anguilla). A small number have backgrounds of other colors (e.g. British Antarctic Territory and Niue) or a unique pattern in the field (e.g. British Indian Ocean Territory and Hawaii). A small number 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.
This armorial of sovereign states shows the coat of arms, national emblem, or seal for every sovereign state. Although some countries do not have an official national emblem, unofficial emblems which are de facto used as national emblems are also shown below.
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 holding galleries of maps of present-day countries and dependencies. The list includes all countries listed in the List of countries, the French overseas departments, the Spanish and Portuguese overseas regions and inhabited overseas dependencies.
There are six monarchies in Oceania with an individual hereditary monarch, who is recognised as the head of state. Each is a constitutional monarchy: the sovereign inherits his or her office, usually keeps it until death or abdication, but is bound by laws and customs in the exercise of their powers. Five of these independent states share King Charles III as their head of state, making them part of a global grouping known as the Commonwealth realms; in addition, all monarchies of Oceania are members of the Commonwealth of Nations. The only sovereign monarchy in Oceania that does not share a monarch with another state is Tonga. Australia and New Zealand have dependencies within the region and outside it, although five non-sovereign constituent monarchs are recognized by New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and France.
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.
This is a list of articles covering the archaeology 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.