Chad and Romania have an identical flag design. What would you do if you wanted to differentiate theses country's flags through a redesign?
How would you differentiate Chad and Romania's flag?
RedesignsI don't dislike COAs on flags in theory (I don't care what your "rules of flag design" say), however in the specific case of Romania I don't think adding the COA would be the solution seeing how Moldova and Andorra are already out there 🇲🇩🇦🇩
Romanian here. This is just my opinion - lacking a coat of arms on the Romanian flag is a symbol in itself as the revolutionaries of 1989 were walking the streets of Bucharest and Timișoara with flags which have had their socialist coat of arms removed. So the lack of coat of arms is almost like another symbol of freedom. Military coat of arms are however added on the flag in certain scenarios.
Honestly, if the physics would allow it I would have loved to have a Romanian flag that simply had a circular hole right in the middle. 🕳️
On the other hand, when they’re small like emojis it’s already hard enough to tell which of those 2 is which and a third makes it more difficult.
Moldova should adopt this banner of arms (but without the weird black outline of the shield) as their national flag, and Andorra should be annexed by Spain. Problem solved.
Haiti and Liechtenstein had identical flags before they both changed. Why cant chad and romania do the same?? At least monaco and indonesia have different aspect ratios
Ahh so that's what I was getting confused by! I thought Chad and Romania had different aspect ratios. Looked them up only to find out they're both 2:3, but I was sure I remembered that from somewhere. Might have been Monaco-Indonesia I was thinking of
The dispute arose because at the time Chad gained its independence and adopted its flag, the then-existing Socialist Republic of Romania used this flag.svg) with their national emblem in the center. After the fall of the Socialist Republic in 1989, Romania re-adopted the plain tricolor it had used from 1866-1948.
Chad argues it shouldn’t have to change its flag just because Romania adopted the same flag 30 years after Chad, while Romania argues it used the design starting in the 19th century, before Chad existed as a sovereign state. Neither side seems inclined to budge on the issue, and it’s not causing any major practical problems at the moment that would force the issue, so we arrive at the current impasse.
Chad has a darker blue stripe.
Chad's blue is darker.
Why would I redesign? If Chad and Romania are both happy with their flag, why bother?
Realistically, what kind of confusion would this actually cause in the real world?
I play a geography game on my phone and part of is flags. It’s infuriating when this comes up because I defy the odds and choose the wrong one pretty much every time! This is why it must be redesigned.
That's an issue with the game, though, not these countries. Both flags should be treated as correct answers.
So, no real world confusion.
The flag of Chad will be hung with other African flags, in a region that is very obviously Chad, with people that are very obviously from Chad. Ditto for Romania. Romania/Moldova would cause more confusion if there's no wind. As you can guess, my "geography game" is Geoguessr.
Redesigning a flag, especially a national flag, is expensive and both these nations will have other things to worry about.
I'm pretty sure "this is why it must be redesigned" is a joke :p
I think Liechtenstein and Haiti both added designs to their red/blue bicolours after doing the Spider-Man pointing meme at an Olympics. So there's that.
Stealing is, by definition, not chad behavior
No, but it's Romanian behaviour /s
…that’s the joke that I’m trying to make
Ah, I see
When I was making a meme on the other sub, I saw that Chad asked the UN to rule on the matter of the identical flags, and the Romanian president got kind of pissy about it. So I guess they're both individually happy with their own flags, but not the fact that they're nearly identical to the other's.
The simplest way s to accentuate their already existing differences.
The romanian flag is cobalt Blue, yellow and vermillion, while the one of chad is french blue, gold and red
In my opinion the solution is simple, there should be an agreement between the two countries to formalize the shades, noone needs to give up their dear tricolor, the romanian cobalt blue needs to be specified as significantly different from navy blue, the yellow of romania needs to be closer to pure yellow while chadian gold can easily become more gold-like by making it more amber and darker, finally romania's flag is not red, its vermillion, and formally changing it to a brighter vermillion while chad adopts a more crimsom red would be great
just like the changes of the color shades of the french flag, variations in shades will still be ok, but the official flags would be quite different and easily differenciable
and most importantly, they maintain their respective subjective descriptions, only making a compromise for the sake of clarity
As you can see, this re-coloring is subtle, within legal tolerances and, more importantly, has a double differnce, hue and brightness
Even if you can distinguish colors perfectly, currently you cannot know id a flag is Chad or simply a dark romania, but in this case, I have used also hue to distinguish, the yellow in chad is rotated clockwise (HSL) while the blue and more importantly the red are rotated counterclockwise in the case of chad
in the case of romania, the opposite is true, which means you cannot mistake the two if they happen to be misprinted by slightly off colors, if the red has a hue of below 360º, its Chad, the opposite for romania
while the one of chad is french blue, gold and red
Doesn't make much difference to how well your suggestion does or doesn't work, but I don't think there is any official precise specification for the Chad colours.
Precisely, there is not any official specification on EITHER flags colors
Which gives us an opportunity to specify them in a way that they are impossible to mix up
No, Romania does specify the colours much more precisely than Chad. They've had the "cobalt blue, etc" idea that you mentioned for a long time, and wrote Pantone, CMYK and RGB specs into the law in June 2023. In contrast, I've never seen any hint of an official spec for Chad more precise that "red, yellow and blue".
To the point of your post, I'm not really convinced that the colour difference you're suggesting is enough to matter in relevant physical world contexts.
Well, the Romanian goverment could get into an agreement with Chad to do this changes
Again, the flags people use will continue to be correct, same as in France with the color change
But both governments would have differentiate their respective flags and everyone would be happier
It's possible. I just think the difference you're suggesting is still too subtle in practical terms.
Well, the Romanian goverment could get into an agreement with Chad to do this changes
They tried that in 2004. Romania got pissy and insisted they own the tricolor.
I'd probably suggest a historical flag or one inspired from historical flags for chad
Kanem:
Bornu
My little boy is over at his grandparents’ with a maps book, loads of flags in. Literally sent me a message asking about this, this morning.
Except, the font was a bit difficult to read, so he called it something like Clad.
So happy he’s into flags too!
I’d say change the chad flag, since the Romanian flag has been in existence since the late 1800s, albeit with a coat of arms
I'd add the Romania's CoA to their flag
Another alternative is hanging the blue on Chad's flag to a light blue like the one on DR Congo's flag or in Argentina's flag
Restore Romania’s monarchy and add the royal coat of arms over the yellow.
This problem will work itself out when Chad gets a coup d’état of its own, and the new junta proposes a different flag.
Hasn't it only recently had one?
No, but almost all of its leaders had.
Change the ratio
Imagine all the flags that would have to change just because they're similar, especially when the similarity is intended (pan African, pan Arab, pan Slavic flags). I mean yeah they're both very similar. I believe Chad's is a bit darker.
Location, where it is.
They shouldn't be redesigned because this would invalidate the Chad move in geoguessr
A new Romanian president always makes his very first official visit to Chad for this reason, so all the flags are the same. Fact.
if you think about context, there’s no reason to change their flags, because if you see a flag resembling chad/romania but it’s surrounded by african flags then id say it’s safe to make an assumption. however if you want to be specific, they do have slightly different shades of red and blue, romania is slightly darker than chad
Well, first of all, I don’t think none should change their flag, yes, they’re pretty similar, so what? The Chad one has some shitty ahh meaning, but still, it’s their flag, just like Monaco and Indonesia.
Anyway, I guess instead of putting a coat of arms or some basic things, I’d just change the orientation, instead of 💙💛❤️, I’d make one of them ❤️💛💙, kind of like Ireland and Ivory Coast yknow?
Anyway, this is just in practice, because in theory it’s absolute garbage, since it’d through away the meaning of the flag of Chad or Romania (depending on which one we change).
So yeah, that’s pretty much what I’d do.
Do you want to comment here what the meanings are? (And why is the color order so important)
chad flag is just the french flag with the white swapped with yellow to better match pan african flags, if the red and blue swapped it would no longer match
romania has blue for liberty, yellow for justice, and red for fraternity. the order doesn’t necessarily matter and it was actually horizontal when the colour combination first arose, but they’ve been using the order they are now for hundreds of years and long before chad did (and it matches moldova) so i’m not sure they would want to change it
It’s contextual.
Add hole to the Romanian one
Chad has a slightly darker blue stripe so make Chad's blue black and romania's sky blue
doesn't chad use darker tones
I think it would only be fair if both countries changed their flags to some degree, the way Haiti and Liechtenstein did it. A lot of things could be done in order to achieve that, for example
Romania:
1, Restore the Romanian Monarchy. 2, Unite with Moldova (amongst other reasons, so that any possible confusion with their flag is thus also dealt with). 3, Turn the flag 90 degrees to the right (no reason, I just think it looks better that way). 4, Put the (now Royal) Coat of Arms onto the flag to make it distinct from any old boring tricolour.
Potential flag I quickly cooked up: https://i.imgur.com/Z2SeCBt.png
Chad:
1, Along with 17 other African countries, form the USA . This wouldn't mean Chad ceased being its own separate entity, but at least it wouldn't be an independent country, so there'd be fewer opportunities for confusion. 2, Change the (now State) flag of Chad to something different. Like something based on their Coat of Arms, or the apparent flag of the Kanem Empire.
Potential flag I quickly cooked up: https://i.imgur.com/DFCwkZR.png
Note that not all of these steps are necessary, even one of them would facilitate a flag-change and thus do away with any future confusion. Also, please don't take these ideas too seriously either.
Put a big letter ‘R’ in the middle of the Ruminian flag.
Time is money
Add Arms to Romanian flag
So we can confuse it with the flags of Moldova and Andorra?
They all have different arms.
Agreed, but those arms are not distinguishable from a distance or when there is not a strong enough breeze
Why would that really be an issue? Modern warfare don't really use flags as markers anyway.
Look at USA and Malaysia. Similar looking flags, but it doesn't cause any issues day to day
Who said anything about warfare? Flags do have other uses. And the US and Malaysia are not neighbouring countries, unlike Moldova and Romania, el Salvador and Nicaragua, or Colombia and Ecuador - all instances where flags can be confused
Warfare is the only time it could be catastrophic to mix them up. Otherwise it's not a big deal.
Worst case was https://www.reddit.com/r/vexillology/comments/qw6dnq/flag_drama_ukraine_fans_turned_a_russia_flag/ and that only happened when flag was turned upside down.
Could be a problem with territorial claims in neighbouring countries, and the Slovakia/Slovenia similarities are annoying
On this sub, there have been very cool redesigns for Chad. Aesthetically my favourote is: "Rotate 90 deg clockwise. Add a zig zag pattern in the middle of the yellow stripe, but only 3 zigs"
The zigzag pattern is from the coa, but still, this redesign might be poor meaning-wise
Of course, of course, the steel crown could be a good addition to the Romanian flag