Romania and Chad, Indonesia and Monaco: The Stories of Near-Identical Flags
Flag quizzes have one especially annoying kind of question: pairs with the same pattern and the same order, separated only by shade or proportions. Two pairs stand out. How did this happen, and was there ever really a dispute?
Romania and Chad
Both run blue, yellow and red from the hoist. We found no record that either copied the other. They seem to have arrived there by separate roads.
Romania's road is much longer. In 1834 Prince Ghica of Wallachia won the Sultan's leave for a flag, with horizontal stripes. It went vertical in the 1848 revolution under French influence, back to horizontal, and then vertical blue, yellow and red became official by a law of April 1867. From 1948 the state emblem of the communist regime sat on the yellow band.[1]
Chad chose its tricolor in 1959. Sources give 6 November[1] or a law of June that year.[2] Romania's flag then carried its emblem, so the two were easy to tell apart.
That changed in 1989. When Romania dropped its communist insignia, the two flags became nearly identical.[3]
The fuss of 2004
In April 2004 The Scotsman reported that Chad planned to ask the UN to look into the matter. President Ion Iliescu of Romania rejected any change, saying: "The tricolour belongs to us. We will not give up the tricolour."[3]
That is only a report of a plan. We found no UN record and no Chadian document showing it was ever filed. So we don't say the two countries had a dispute.
Can color separate them?
It's often said that Chad's blue is indigo and Romania's cobalt. What does the law say? Romania's constitution fixes the order of the stripes and names no shades.[4] The annex to Law 75 of 1994 is reported to name cobalt blue, though we haven't seen the text.[5] Chad's 2018 constitution says only vertical bands of blue, gold and red of equal size.[6] We couldn't read the wording of its December 2023 constitution. So "indigo" isn't in the Chadian text we read. Chad's blue looks darker in the images on this site, but that's a difference that can vary from one flag to another.
Indonesia and Monaco
This time it's red and white, with red on top in both.
Article 35 of Indonesia's constitution calls the flag the Red and White, Sang Merah Putih.[7] Law No. 24 of 2009 is far more exact: width two-thirds of length, red above and white below, and its explanatory notes define the red as RGB 255, 0, 0.[8]
Article 7 of Monaco's constitution says two equal horizontal bands of red and white.[9] The Sovereign Ordinance of 4 April 1881 describes the same design and points to attached models, but its text gives no ratio.[10] The 4:5 ratio usually given for Monaco comes from flag reference works, and we haven't seen the attached model ourselves. In practice 2:3 is also reported.[11] So even "the proportions differ" stands on less firm ground than you'd think.
There are stories of Monaco protesting to Indonesia, but their dates differ from source to source, and we couldn't confirm them.
Turn them over and you get Poland
Poland's flag looks like these two upside down. Article 28 of its constitution makes white and red the colors of the Republic.[12] The Act of 1980 puts white over red at a ratio of 5:8, and defines the colors in CIE coordinates.[13] Where many countries stop at the word "red", that's unusually thorough.
Tips for telling them apart are in our guide to look-alike flags. With close to 200 national flags in the world, there are only so many ways to arrange a few stripes.
Sources
- Les origines lointaines du drapeau tricolore roumain (Dan Cernovodeanu)
- Chad
- Call to UN as Chad and Romania keep same flag flying
- Constitution of Romania, Article 12
- Romania, flag law
- Constitution of Chad 2018, Article 8
- Constitution of Indonesia, Article 35
- Undang-Undang Republik Indonesia Nomor 24 Tahun 2009
- Constitution of Monaco, Article 7
- Ordonnance Souveraine du 4 avril 1881 sur le pavillon princier et le pavillon national
- Monaco
- Constitution of Poland, Article 28
- Ustawa z dnia 31 stycznia 1980 r. o godle, barwach i hymnie (Dz.U. 2019 poz. 1509)
Read next
- Telling Look-Alike Flags Apart
How to tell apart twelve groups of confusable flags, from Nordic crosses and Pan-Arab colors to vertical tricolors, one difference at a time.
- Flag Proportions: What the Law Says and What It Doesn't
From Switzerland's square to Belgium's 13:15, we looked for famous flag proportions in the legal texts. Some numbers are there. Others aren't.
This page was drafted with AI (Claude). Its facts were checked against the sources listed below, and the site owner read it before publication. Found a mistake? Please write to us and include a source: Contact