Flags with triangles and what they mean

A triangle at the hoist costs almost no space and still changes the whole character of a flag. Sometimes it carries real symbolism, sometimes it is pure geometry meant to tell similar designs apart. Five examples show how varied the idea can be, and one of them even breaks the quiet rule that national flags are rectangles.

The classic from central Europe

The Czech flag is made of two horizontal bands, white on top and red below, plus a blue triangle at the hoist that reaches to the middle. The blue was added in 1920, back when it still belonged to Czechoslovakia, to set it apart from the almost identical white and red flag of Poland.

After the split in 1993 the Czech Republic kept the shared design while Slovakia adopted its own. Here the triangle is less a carrier of meaning than a practical way to tell flags apart, a fine distinction that runs the other way round on other flags.

A sun and three stars

On the Philippine flag a white equilateral triangle sits at the hoist, filled with a golden sun of eight rays and three golden stars in the corners. The three stars stand for the main island groups of Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. A blue band runs along the top and a red one along the bottom. Unlike the Czech example, the triangle here is the frame for the country's key symbols rather than just a block of colour.

South Africa's green Y

South Africa's flag from 1994 carries a black triangle at the hoist, from which a green Y spreads out towards the fly, edged by narrow white and gold stripes. A red band sits above and a blue one below. The design by state herald Frederick Brownell uses the converging Y to picture different paths that join into one shared road.

Unusually for a national flag, the individual colours were deliberately given no fixed official meaning. The black triangle still stays the anchor the whole pattern hangs on, and makes the flag unmistakable at a glance.

Three quick examples

The triangle turns up all around the world, and the thinking behind it changes every time:

• Bosnia and Herzegovina: a yellow triangle on a blue field, with a row of white stars running along its slope. The three corners stand for the country's three constituent peoples, the shape roughly echoes the outline of the territory and the stars represent Europe.
• Guyana: the Golden Arrowhead, a yellow arrow over a green field with a red triangle at the hoist, both set off by a thin pale border.
• Djibouti: a white triangle at the hoist bearing a red star, with a light blue and a green band behind it.

Nepal breaks the shape

Nepal's flag is the great exception among all states. Instead of a rectangle it is made of two stacked pennants that together form two points, a so-called double pennon. It is also taller than it is wide, something no other national flag can claim. The upper section holds a white moon with a crescent, the lower a white sun with twelve rays, all on a crimson field with a blue border.

The current shape was fixed in 1962, though the roots of the double pennant reach back much further. In a quiz Nepal is a gift: spot the two points and you barely need to guess, and outliers like this are exactly the ones that stick in memory.

That kind of quick recognition is exactly what you can train in CountryRush, where flags and outlines come up together, from the bold triangle to the plain tricolour. The Daily Trip mixes familiar and easily confused flags every day, so it is not only the obvious ones that show up.