Here’s a quote from Charles Sumner:

There is the national flag. He must be cold, indeed, who can look upon its folds rippling in the breeze without pride of country.

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Sumner was a Massachusetts politician from almost 150 years ago who, among other things, campaigned for votes for freed slaves after the American Civil War. Here’s an alternative view

from James Baldwin:

It comes as a great shock around the age of 5, 6 or 7 to discover that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance, along with everybody else, has not pledged allegiance to you.

Baldwin died in 1987 and was among other things a civil rights activist so I guess there is more than just quotes on flags that ties the two of these guys together.

It seems to me that people put a lot of emotion into flags.  Flags are symbols and it’s symbolic also that people should hold such strong and often opposing views invested in flags.

For something so important to us it’s a bit surprising that the word flag had only been in English for about 100 years by the time of Shakespeare.

There were flags in England before 500 years ago, but they weren’t called flags.  Just what they were called tells a tale both of flags and of English dialects.

I’ll start by reviewing the history of flags.

It is thought that the idea for flags originated in India or China and was brought to western European use after crusaders saw them in use by their Islamic enemies.  At first Europeans used flags showing symbols of their various patron saints.

The first English flags are reported to have been a white cross in 1198 and then a red cross 1277. The cross of St. George is still there on the British flag which is actually a blend with two other crosses, that of St. Andrew, patron saint of Scotland and St. Patrick who I don’t think I need to explain which country he was the patron saint of.

The reason these things were called flags is not known for sure but there are a few theories. A similar word shows up in several Germanic languages so although the timing might point to Latin or French those don’t seem to have been the source.

Flag is thought possibly to be an onomatopoeia, which is to say flap sounds a bit like a flag flapping. But there’s a hint there too in the fact that when a marathon runner is getting tired they are said to be flagging.  There is a “hanging down limply” meaning associated with the word as well.

So what was it that English speakers called flags before the word flag emerged?

A flag was called a fane.

The tale this tells of flags is that even before the word flag arrived there were symbolic emblems in use, and even before these were made of cloth after the inspiration of the Islamic world and cultures further east before them, there were rigid flags in use.

The word fane you’ll recognize in weather vane;  a metal flag that the wind blows.

And this leads to the story of English dialects.  Just as the word fox came from the north of England and the word vixen from the south, fane was a northern word while vane appeared based on the southern tendency to use “v” where northerners used “f.”