Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Heraldry and vexillology/Archive 2021

Discussion about the Byzantine flag
A discussion is currently taking place on WCommons at Category talk:Flags of the Palaiologos dynasty to try to find what was the flag of the Byzantine empire in the 14th-15th century. Feel free to join to help! Veverve (talk) 04:45, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Use of state flags of Mexico RFC
There is a discussion about the use of state flags of Mexico at WikiProject Mexico, where you can join and discuss it. (CC) Tb hotch ™ 20:45, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

Sir Harry Hylton-Foster
Two years ago I made this page and including arms for nearly all the people on it. The lone remaining exception is Sir Harry Hylton-Foster, who died in office and so did not ascend to the peerage. Looking at what photographs I could find of the inside of Speaker's House I never saw his arms, which were always either obscured or out of focus. Recently I discovered these old photographs [] [] which I think might show it. The caption is illegible, but the placement between the arms of Ruffside and Maybray-King means it logically should be Hylton-Foster (though weirdly his and Dunrossil's arms must be the wrong way around). My best guess at the blazon is Azure on a pale Ermine between two seagulls volant fesswise Proper the mace of the House of Commons palewise also Proper. Does anyone else have a better guess? Robin S. Taylor (talk) 14:48, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

FAR notice
I have nominated John Brooke-Little for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Hog Farm Talk 01:54, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Church of England
Armorial of the Church of England is a page I have just created listing the official arms of each diocese. Robin S. Taylor (talk) 17:45, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

Unsourced colour tables
I've been removing colour tables added by Clock12000 from flag articles, seeing as they're clearly unsourced and likely unverifiable. Checking the user's contributions, though, it appears they've been engaging in this pattern of edits across a string of accounts, including the older Atik Ishrak Adib and the currently active We moved to 8.12. None of the accounts are blocked, so this doesn't seem to be a sockpuppetry issue, but maybe someone working on flag articles will be familiar with the editing pattern and can tell if further investigation is needed. --Paul_012 (talk) 16:05, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

==Discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) § Flags for Bulgaria and South Korea at the Olympics== You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) § Flags for Bulgaria and South Korea at the Olympics. &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 21:06, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

FAR notice
I have nominated Ecclesiastical heraldry for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Hog Farm Talk 01:42, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Merchant ship flags of the British Empire
Asking for clarification and input re flag flown by merchant ships of the British Empire. The Dominion of Canada and the Colony of Newfoundland are a starting point for something which may affect many other countries. There is a difference of opinion between myself and over this issue. As far as I can tell, merchant ships of the Dominion of Canada flew the Canadian flag (🇨🇦) from the formation of the Dominion out of British North America. The Colony of Newfoundland used from 1862, and  from 1870. Davidships contends that the British Red Ensign is correct.

Taking another example, India. As far as I can tell Indian ships flew the flag of the British East India Company (, and ) from 1591-1858. Preumably the latter remained in force until the new Indian flag was introduced on 1 November 1863. These are just three countries that formed part of the British Empire. Looking for input on this issue. It may be better to discuss each country in a subsection to prevent confusion. Mjroots (talk) 06:05, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I've copied the above into subsections below. If you want to add in another country for discussion, please add a separate subsections. Australia probably worth discussing as a level 3 subheader, with the states prior to 1901 as a level 4 subheader thereunder. Mjroots (talk) 06:29, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Unless either can provide a source about which flag was used and when I don't think there's much that can be done here. If this is about flags in infoboxes, I must note that the differences - between the various red ensigns and also the various EIC flags - are very hard to notice, in fact they are nearly unrecognisable at the given scale. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 14:41, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I knew I'd seen it somewhere - in Flag of the Cape Colony, it states "In a series of decisions made in 1864, 1865, and 1869, the UK's government decided that every colony should have a distinctive badge, to be displayed on flags at sea. The governor was to display the badge in the center of the Union Jack when travelling by sea; vessels owned by the colony's government were to display it in the fly of the Blue Ensign; and, with Admiralty permission, privately owned ships registered in the colony could display the badge in the fly of the Red Ensign." - Weekes, N. (2008). Colonial Flag Badges : A Chronology. Mjroots (talk) 12:01, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
 * All that is completely correct (and sourced to the very same Flag Institute reference already given - why not read it?). The fact remains that, as stated, for the Red Ensign, an Admiralty Warrant was required and none were issued until the 1890s.  The Blue Ensign history was in any case different as Government-owned ships, for which it was designated, were not subject to the Merchant Shipping Act (including the flag provisions). Davidships (talk) 12:26, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Canada
As far as I can tell, merchant ships of the Dominion of Canada flew the Canadian flag (🇨🇦) from the formation of the Dominion out of British North America. The Colony of Newfoundland used from 1862, and  from 1870. Davidships contends that the British Red Ensign is correct. Mjroots (talk) 06:29, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

India
As far as I can tell Indian ships flew the flag of the British East India Company (, and ) from 1591-1858. Preumably the latter remained in force until the new Indian flag was introduced on 1 November 1863. Mjroots (talk) 06:29, 1 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately the above completely ignores the legal basis of maritime flag law (this discussion is not about the use of a civil ensign/flag on land). This useful research paper by the Flag Institute notes the initial 1801 Royal proclamation that established the undefaced Red Ensign as normal national colours afloat for all British merchant ships".  The Merchant Shipping Act 1854 established the unified British merchant ship register that encompassed not only the UK but all British territories; one of the fundamentals was to require all British subjects to enter ships they owned on the British register exclusively - and in turn the register provided the identities of ships that were entitled to naval protection.  It was a centralised system, based in London and administered by British authorities (customs houses in the UK, and colonial administrations in overseas territories - and a limited role for consuls in non-British ports).  Section 105 made specific provisions regarding ensigns, clearly referring to the 1801-mandated flag, and with significant penalties for infringements (a fine of up to £500, about £50,000 today); the only exception was where there was a Royal or Admiralty Warrant authorising a different ensign.  This was carried forward, with even greater clarity, by the Merchant Shipping (Colours) Act 1889, as seen in the consolidating Merchant Shipping Act 1894 in Section 73. Colonial administrations had no legal powers to vary the provisions of MSA.
 * Although there were earlier company-specific Admiralty warrants, para 28 of the Flag Institute paper indicates that territory-wide warrants regarding defaced merchant red ensigns were not issued until 1892 - Canada being the first - and thereafter from time to time granted to some other British territories. On the examples raised above:
 * Canadian Red Ensign notes specifically that, while it was indeed used at sea prior to 1892, such use was informal and extra-legal - that status is confirmed by the Canadian Government. From the reference to the Governor-General's 1891 memo it seems likely that the Canadian government had raised the issue at that time (but I have not been able to access the text of that, nor the cited George Stanley book); I am told that the Canadian request was in 1890, citing Charles P. Band, "Our flag" (Toronto: Musson, 1916), but I have not found that on line either.
 * Newfoundland gained its own Red Ensign only in 1918. I have found no references to the extent of prior maritime extra-legal usage, if any.
 * India never received an Admiralty warrant for a maritime red ensign defaced with the Star of India and I have seen no evidence of its extra-legal use on merchant ships. In the 19th century it was more complicated the HEIC flags mentioned above are irrelevant since they only related to ships used by the Company itself (which had a monopoly for time). The developing commercial shipping businesses, when they came to register ships in Indian ports under MSA1854, were covered by the same rules as everyone else (it is unthinkable that they flew the discredited EIC's ensign at that time). This reference, already used elsewhere on WP, includes "For merchant vessels registered in British India (as opposed to the princely states) the proper ensign was the British Red Ensign. A Red Ensign with the Order of the Star of India in the fly was used to represent British India in international organizations, leading some sources erroneously to identify it as the national flag of British India."
 * I think most of this difference of opinion arises from the failure to recognise that a civil flag and a maritime ensign are not the same thing, and have different legal footings. Where, on WP, flaglets are used in articles about ships or shipwrecks I assume it is to indicate the ensign that would have been flown to denote their nationality (alongside the name of the port or the territory where they were registered) - I think that  shares that view. Davidships (talk) 16:40, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Flags at various Olympics
There have been requests made at Template talk:FlagIOC which could likely use some extra input from folks who are more familiar with that content than myself; the main areas of (personal) contention are when a flag was changed shortly before or after an Olympic Games and not necessarily having concrete evidence of when that flag was changed. Thanks. Primefac (talk) 17:28, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Similarities in flags
What do you think of the Similarities in flags article. I find several deficiencies myself. The tone seems to be directed at the reader. Some of it reads like an instruction manual. Much of it is unsourced or pure original research. All in all, it comes off as a primary source rather than reporting on a primary source. CapnZapp (talk) 09:07, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a page in need of gutting. Go for it? Primefac (talk) 12:41, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Prodded - this is obviously WP:SYNTH for the most of it. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 03:10, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Now deleted by, should solve the issue for the time being. The concept might be worthwhile of a more serious article (hence why I didn't jump to AfD), but that would require somebody do the hard work of looking for actual sources. Cheers, RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 03:24, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

FAR for Flag of Portugal
I have nominated Flag of Portugal for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. (t · c)  buidhe  04:42, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Category:Heraldry and vexillology articles needing expert attention has been nominated for discussion
Category:Heraldry and vexillology articles needing expert attention has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Peaceray (talk) 20:15, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

Local councils in Scotland
I started this page yesterday. Most of the information is ready-collated in the Lyon Court's Heraldry for the Self-Isolator publications from last year. We don't have illustrations for the majority of the arms - or indeed pages for the councils to which they belonged. Robin S. Taylor (talk) 14:49, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

Catholic sees of Great Britain
Having already done armorials for the Anglican sees, I am now moving on to the Catholic ones. It is going reasonably well so far but there are a lot of sees for which the necessary information is unavailable. Robin S. Taylor (talk) 14:58, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

Verifying flags
Hi. I've seen some terrible flags in my day on here. Such as File:Flag of Yolo County, California.svg. However, it is hard to find some flags, especially of like counties (that one is sort of verifiably bad, like see the photo here) and the flag used on Wikipedia especially if it is there for a while will end up on a lot of stock websites in photoshopped pictures, making it seem real -- like look at this lol. I'm not really sure how this would work, but could we try to start a system of verifying that a flag is accurate in some fashion? Like requesting users from the area to get pictures of flags from places that don't have good photos of them online and trying to fix this problem that seems somewhat to very widespread of bad vectorizations never getting fixed? Like it just feels wrong that Commons doesn't have a standard of verifiability that a flag is anywhere close to accurate to the real one and we should start to do something about it. DemonDays64 (talk) 03:54, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

RPC flag
Just on the off chance there are any folks here who wish to make a flag, I've started a discussion at WT:OLYMPICS regarding the Russian Paralympic Committee's flag under which athletes will be competing at this summer's Paralympic games. Any thoughts, advice, or assistance (including where is the "best" place to request such an image) is much appreciated at the linked discussion. Primefac (talk) 11:29, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

RFC at Talk:Pahonia
There is an RFC at Talk:Pahonia concerning Pahonia and Coat of arms of Lithuania. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:23, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

Blazons Needed
Recently, having found a [| very generous preview] on Amazon, I was able to extract from Debrett's Peerage 2019 a load of life peers' blazons we didn't already have:


 * Ahmad of Wimbledon
 * Alliance
 * Bamford
 * Bell
 * Bilimoria
 * Birt
 * Black of Brentwood
 * Black of Crossharbour
 * Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury
 * Boswell of Aynho
 * Brinton
 * Buscombe
 * Butler-Sloss
 * Cameron of Dillington
 * Chidgey

There the preview ran out. There are still others whose grants have been mentioned in the College of Arms's newsletters but not blazoned or exemplified. Does anyone here have access to copies of Debrett's 2015 or 2019? If so, can they find blazons for:


 * Carrington of Fulham
 * Clarke of Stone-cum-Ebony
 * Davies of Stamford
 * Eaton
 * Eatwell
 * Faulkner of Worcester
 * Feldman of Elstree
 * Finlay of Llandaff
 * Foster of Thames Bank
 * Framlingham
 * Freud
 * Fritchie
 * George
 * Gold
 * Gould of Brookwood
 * Grade of Yarmouth
 * Hallett
 * Hameed
 * Hennessy of Nymphsfield
 * Howard of Lympne
 * Jay of Ewelme
 * Judge
 * Kalms
 * Magan of Castletown
 * Mawhinney
 * McKenzie of Luton
 * Nicholson of Winterbourne
 * Noon
 * Paisley of St George's
 * Rana
 * Rebuck
 * Ritchie of Brompton
 * Sheikh
 * Singh of Wimbledon
 * Sugar
 * Taylor of Holbeach
 * Truscott
 * Verjee
 * Wade of Chorlton
 * Wheatcroft?

Robin S. Taylor (talk) 11:26, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

FAR notice
I have nominated England expects that every man will do his duty for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Hog Farm Talk 21:01, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

Timeline of national flags issue with WP:OWN
A request was made to WP:RFPP to protect this article due to perceived WP:OWN/gatekeeping issue by an IP range(s). I'm not well-versed in this subject, but one glaring issue is that there are no references in this article, so it's difficult to evaluate the merits of the edits. Additional eyes would be appreciated. This might merit an ANI report, but I figured I'd start here. OhNo itsJamie Talk 20:57, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Notice of Featured Article Review
I have nominated Flag of Armenia for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Hog Farm Talk 00:28, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

Canadian Universities
Having completed a register of universities in Britain, I thought it was time to do one for Canada. This should be a much swifter process as the Public Register should have all the necessary information easily accessible so we don't have to hunt around for it. Robin S. Taylor (talk) 00:52, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Notice of RFC
Hi Heraldry and vexillology,

A discussion is going on that might be within your area of interest and expertise; it can be found here: Talk:Austria-Hungary.

BilledMammal (talk) 22:10, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

New IP removing flags or emblems
I added section User talk:49.150.100.127 to this new IP user's Talk page due to recent removals of flag or emblem images from templates. I'm not so familiar with flags/emblems, so if someone here could take a glance and see if I'm on track here, it would be appreciated. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 07:29, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

FAR for flag of Lithuania
I have nominated Flag of Lithuania for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  22:49, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

New article
For the interested: Shakespeare coat of arms. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 20:46, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

French flag shade in templates
I have proposed that, following the apparent shift in official practice, the darker variant of the French flag should be used in Wikipedia templates. It is best not to have the discussion happening in parallel in various places, so can I direct those who might want to express an opinion to Template talk:Country data France. Thank you. Kevin McE (talk) 12:05, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

List of city flags
Hi. List of city flags has a few problems, the most apparent of which is that it's way too long/big because of the number of images, to the point that it won't even load properly. The obvious solution is to split of articles for individual countries, as so far only the US has its own list of city flags (Flags of cities of the United States). Before I start doing something like that, though, I thought it may be wise to address some more fundamental issues first, and do so here, since it could involve the creation of multiple new flag related pages. Any input is appreciated. (Pinging who has been expanding the article and  who brought the issue up at the article talk page a while ago.) Lennart97 (talk) 18:32, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Are city flags even an inherently notable topic to the extent that putting a number of them together in a list format satisfies WP:NLIST, if you can call it a list?
 * If the answer to the above is yes, what counts as a city for this purpose? Despite the subjectivity of that question, which is also going to differ per country, it's clear in any case is that this current list contains all kinds of villages, towns and municipalities that are not cities by any measure.
 * At the bare minimum, split out the worst offenders: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, France, Italy, Malta, Netherlands, Venezuela, (and maybe) the UK - basically anything with more than one subsection. This should help the page size, even if it's only a temporary fix (i.e. making no comments on whether these should exist or not). Primefac (talk) 08:43, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks Primefac, I see you've already split off those worst offenders. I completely agree. Lennart97 (talk) 09:01, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * No problem; I get particular about splits and attribution so I figured I'd do the majority of that heavy lifting. Sorry for leaving you a bit of a mess to clean up with grammar and cats. Primefac (talk) 09:19, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

I've spotted an incorrect historical flag in Template:flagicon, can an admin fix it?
When typing this wikicode: 🇦🇫 it shows up the current Islamic Emirate flag instead of the historical flag of that year, which is the same as 🇦🇫 Can someone fix this? -- WR   11:57, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, the flagicon (and by extension, the entire country data X system) is horrible and (I would argue) broken, because it uses switches instead of ranges to determine which year to pick from. If you want the flag used in 1931, you need to find the next-oldest date in Template:Country data Afghanistan, which in this instance is   ( → 🇦🇫). Since the flag didn't actually change in 1931, there's no reason to add it into the template. One of these days when I have more time than sense I'm going to make an effort towards converting these to Lua so that they can take an input date and determine which is the appropriate flag to use for that year. Primefac (talk) 12:01, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Hope you can get to that so it can be fixed. In the meanwhile, do you know what tool I can use to find out what pages on Wikipedia have " 🇦🇫 "? I came across this twice so far (both times I fixed them by changing it to 1930) so I should see where else it appears and should be fixed. -- WR   12:35, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I would use an  search, so something like this should do (I used regex because the search function's "literal" option with quotes is garbage). Note that this picks up other things such as flag use, but I suspect they'll need to be changed as well. Primefac (talk) 12:37, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks! That's really great and I will start fixing some of these now. The other things it picked up were those that were "Kingdom of Afghanistan". -- WR   12:40, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Railways
I am drafting an armorial of railways in Britain. Robin S. Taylor (talk) 16:16, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

heralds extraordinary
Most of the articles on British heraldic officers have lists of occupants of the office, and many of these are annotated (Office used in Extraordinary) so big that the officer's personal name is visually lost, particularly if seven consecutively are thus tagged.

I propose moving this notation into the next column, after the date of appointment; or into a new Notes column. —Tamfang (talk) 20:14, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Issues with the emblem infobox template
Hi! I started a discussion on Template talk:Infobox emblem about improving the template as in my opinion it currently has issues regarding blazons etc. I would appreciate it if anyone was willing to share their thoughts on the matter. --Fenn-O-maniC (talk) 08:29, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

RFC in progress
There is an RFC in progress on Talk:France which affects this project. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. Kevin McE (talk) 17:51, 21 December 2021 (UTC)