Happy New Year 2010!

This week we will again look at options for a name for the Black Country Flag, having looked at ideas derived from religion and geography already. In the last article looking at geography we hit upon the idea of ‘The Coal Cross’ and this may give us a clue as to another area for examination.

Black Country Flag

The cross that I suggested as part of that title is a part of the construction of the design, so the actual design of the flag itself may provide further possibilities for a name. This method may at first appear to be rather dull but in reality flags named or nicknamed in such a way can become quite famous and generate strong emotions by their names alone. Perhaps the best examples are the American ‘Stars and Stripes’ or the French ‘Tricolour’ – a flag that influenced generations of flags after it. This may be to do with the idea that the name of the flag is visually obvious to the design, creating a stronger mental association with the flag in ones mind.

So looking at my proposal for inspiration there are several elements that could be considered in this method. Simply the colours might be a good idea, certainly an idea used widely across the globe. Although a name with four colours does not really roll off the tongue, using fewer feels like ignoring parts of the meaning. Black and red would be a good combination as it links to the Elihu Burritt quote “Black by Day and Red by Night”, though red isn’t a dominant colour in the design Colours do not appear to be the best name for this flag. Plus I would argue that any flag named purely after colours is lacking a very meaningful name.

Other than that we can examine the actual symbols, which in our case leaves us looking at the two crosses – the geared cross and the chain cross. In fact these two descriptions give us two good possible names! My personal preference is for ‘The Chain Cross’ as I feel it flows better.

However, there is one major issue with the use of such a name… it is completely dependant upon the design used. If my proposal does not become the Black Country flag the name probably could not be transferred as the meaning and relation would be broken. Nonetheless it remains a candidate, indeed both ‘The Chain Cross’ and ‘The Geared Cross’ remain as candidates. Continuing over the weeks I’ll write about more possibilities that I have thought of as well as those suggested by you the reader.

Article is written by Phillip Tibbets, researcher of Heraldic Art and co-founder of Heartland Heritagewear