Talk:Union Jack

Original research concerns

@Martin of Sheffield Hi! To follow up on https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Union_Jack&oldid=prev&diff=1163623824: I hadn't realized the etymologies were also given in the OED entries; my apologies. I've tried a second time to cleanup that section—let me know if it's alright now (or if my edits are still flawed). BalinKingOfMoria (talk) 22:25, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

I feel that the quotations from the OED establishing that "-kin" has a long history (Chaucer and Langland) is important. There is so much rubbish written about the origin of the word "jack" (for example "Jacket" or "Jacobus") that clarity is important. Likewise I'm not sure that "by analogy ..." is accurate. It's not an analogy, it is a common usage, a "jack" is something small. Hence the need to include the fact that the OED lists examples from 1530 to 2014. I'm afraid that I think it is also important that the jackstaff is mentioned. There's a lot of putting the cart before the horse to try and explain the origin of "jack" as comming from the jackstaff, when in fact it was the other way around. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 20:14, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Ah, I see; I was unfamiliar with the existence of those misconceptions. Out of curiosity, are there any MoS guidelines on material like this that isn't directly relevant per se, but is instead "meta-relevant" (so to speak) to the real-world understanding of a concept?

In the meantime, I've reverted my second edit. And if I'm going a bit overboard with all this, feel free to let me know and I'll pipe down :-). BalinKingOfMoria (talk) 20:52, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, Martin of Sheffield (talk) 21:00, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Ratio

@2403:6200:8840:66e4:b56a:c2e3:c710:2fac:. Assertions must be backed up by citations. The assertion that either 1:2 or 3:5 are used is backed by College of Arms see: College of Arms (2023). "Union Flag: approved designs". Retrieved 16 September 2023. For the avoidance of doubt and the sake of convenience, Garter King of Arms, under the authority of the Earl Marshal, has approved two versions of the Union flag as being accurate representations suitable for use. These are of the proportions 5:3, commonly flown on land; and 2:1, commonly flown at sea.. There is no higher heraldic authority within the United Kingdom that the College of Arms, a definitive statement from them caries the highest authority.

Please have a read of WP:BRD and WP:3RR before thinking about reverting the article. Instead, all discussion must be here until a consensus is agreed.Martin of Sheffield (talk) 15:32, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

That IP range Special:Contributions/2403:6200:8840:66E4::/64, is continuing to delete this. Perhaps it's time for semi-protection? BilCat (talk) 00:57, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Go ahead, though the other possibility is a range block. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 07:54, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

They appear to be using different ranges at times, so I've requested page protection at WP:RPP. We'll see what happens. RPP is generally more effective for me than ANI, and usually gets a quicker response too. BilCat (talk) 01:00, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Range block for Special:Contributions/2403:6200:8840:66E4:0:0:0:0/64. Thanks, User:Favonian! BilCat (talk) 18:45, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

1 Martin of Sheffield (talk) 21:28, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

What is officially specified vs. what is not

I've changed one part in the "design" subheading with regards to colours. It may be good to have some other eyes read over the design section for similar instances where phrasing is a little misleading.

In the case of colour, the colours are not actually specified beyond azure, argent, gules (blue, white/silver, red). A lot of the specific recommendations about the flag's design come from the Flag Institute, which while a good and reliable source, aren't technically official. The College of Arms does have a page of designs which it has approved, but this isn't mandated and they specify that variation is permitted.

I would contend that I think we should possibly seek to replace a lot of Flag Institute references with references to that College of Arms "Union Flag: approved designs" page, as it addresses aspects of the design quite well. 2A02:C7C:C4CD:A500:8114:7627:C570:5540 (talk) 19:39, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Name and "de facto" nature

It is called the Union Flag and it is not simply the de facto flag - it is the official flag of the United Kingdom

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/designated-days-for-union-flag-flying FerranValls (talk) 19:28, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree that we should replace "de facto" with "official" in the article. If there's strong evidence that the Union Flag is actually de facto, we should add a citation. UnsungHistory (talk) 00:14, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Upon further research,it was never formally adopted as a national flag but rather a government flag and a royal banner,the flag institute found that there are 2 cases where the government reffered to it as the national flag,once on 14 july 1908 and once on 27 june 1933,on 5 February 2008 a bill was proposed to establish it as a national flag https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2008-02-05b.792.0 UnsungHistory (talk) 16:32, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

Case consistency

@Dicklyon: why change "Union Flag" to "Union flag" and not "Union Jack" to "Union jack" or for that matter "Red Ensign" to "Red ensign"? Jacks and ensigns are variants of the more general flag, and if consistency were really an issue you would either convert all, or none. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 13:03, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

See n-gram stats for Union Flag and for Union Jack for a very clear picture of the difference between "consistently capitalized in sources" and not. Also Red Ensign (most of these were already lowercase, but I agree I left some inconsistent). See MOS:CAPS and WP:NCCAPS. Dicklyon (talk) 22:29, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

ngrams are going to be rubbish for "Union Flag" because there are all kinds of union flags that are not the Union Flag. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 22:38, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Ngrams are typically rubbish for any type of evaluation that feature a common word, but they're overused to get a point across and sway discussions. They lack context to draw any type of meaningful conclusion from and the sooner we realize that the better. Hey man im josh (talk) 23:35, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

I provided ngrams with a bit of context, but I agree they're limited in what they can show you. You can look for example at British Union Flag and see it's never been consistently capped in that context. If you can identity some larger number of uses of "Union flag" referring to something other than the flag in question, of course we should discount for that. But I haven't found much. "European Union flag" shows up as a small percentage in recent decades, and "Grand Union flag" adds about equally to uppercase and lowercase stats over many decades, but again at a small percentage ("new Union flag" and "first Union flag", sometimes associated with the American colonists, don't amount to more than a couple percent of the total counts). What else should we look at?

Here's a book on British flags that uses "Union Jack" and "Union flag"; that is, their style is more like ours that some are. Dicklyon (talk) 06:50, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Here is a link to the FAQ page of the College of Arms who are the official body (established 1417) who regulate heraldry within the UK. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 09:39, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for that. It's clear they're not consistently capitalizing flag (e.g. in first answer, "Garter King of Arms, under the authority of the Earl Marshal, has approved two versions of the Union flag for guidance", and later "Where a flagstaff displays two Schedule 1 flags one of which is the Union flag, the Union flag must be flown in a superior position to the other flag"). Dicklyon (talk) 09:55, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Not consistently, but in the majority of cases. Incidentally you haven't yet answered my first question, if you believe "flag" should no be capitalised, then why not "jack" or "ensign". For that matter, following your logic of only capitalising the adjective and not the noun adjunct in compound nouns will you be trying to change the UK and USA to the "United kingdom" and "United states of america" respectively? If the logic you are applying leads to nonsense, then perhaps the logic might be faulty? Martin of Sheffield (talk) 10:19, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

I thought that answer was clearly implicit in the first words of my response above, "See n-gram stats...". More generally, with respect to your nonsense strawmen, we capitalize things that are consistently capitalized in sources. Maybe you haven't read the lead paragraphs at MOS:CAPS and WP:NCCAPS? Dicklyon (talk) 11:54, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Exactly: "capitalization is primarily needed for proper names" and "unless the title is a proper name". "Union Flag" is a proper noun phrase and both parts should be capitalised. Dismissing any parallel example as strawmen is not a dismissal but a deliberate deafness. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 12:53, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

More complete quotes (my bold). From WP:NCCAPS: "Do not capitalize the second or subsequent words in an article title, unless the title is a proper name. For multiword page titles, one should leave the second and subsequent words in lowercase unless the title phrase is a proper name that would always occur capitalized, even mid-sentence." Also, from MOS:CAPS: "...capitalization is primarily needed for proper names, .... Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized; only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia." Dicklyon (talk) 03:07, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Speaking of MOS:CAPS, why isn't that the Manual of style, rather than the Manual of Style? Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 16:32, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Always a fun question. The MOS only applies in article (main) space; in WP space, Talk space, etc, people are free to use all manner of styles. Dicklyon (talk) 22:19, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Here's a book on British flags that uses "Union Jack" and "Union flag" - No it doesn't, which you would know if you had read the source rather than relying on a search for "Union flag" on Google books. The link you found is for British Flags: Their Early History, and Their Development at Sea. by William Perrin. Although that appears to be a reprint, that is a 1922 work, which can be read on OpenLibrary [1]

That link should open on page 71 with instances of "Union flag" and "Union Flag" highlighted. That page illustrates the usage in the book, but I could also refer to pages 15, 20, 51, 52 etc. to demonstrate the book's usage, which is to capitalise "Union Flag" when talking about the Union Flag, and to use lower case flag when talking about union flags (e.g. "Union flag of 1658" (page 52), "the design of the Union flag" (page 71) but "Coloured drawings of the Royal Standard, Union Flag, and Red Ensign" (page 71) ).

So that book confirms that the flag is called the "Union Flag." Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 16:28, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Nobody is questioning what it's called, just how to style it. That page 71 shows "Union flag" 3 times, and "Union Flag" 3 times. These uses all appear to be referring to the Union flag: "although no change was made in the Union flag", "the final change in the design of the Union flag", "a reduced facsimile of the Union flag", even if the design did evolve a bit. The capped one referring to 1707, "Coloured drawings of the Royal Standard, Union Flag, and Red Ensign ...", suggests there's no clear distinction of versions over time. The other two capped versions on that page are in old quotations. Most other uses in the book are lowercase. Per MOS:CAPS, we capitalize things that are consistently capitalized in sources. This is not one. Dicklyon (talk) 22:19, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes, two are from quotations, which also shows that it s not just this book, but the quoted source too that capitalise it. And note that this book uses the capitalisation from the outset on page vi, "... the story of the Union Flag ..." This book evidences against your attempts to lowercase all mentions as you did. At best it is evidence for following the MOS in using Union flag when we are talking of the flag of the union, rather than the Union Flag. That is, your lowercasing of flag in the bolded first word was very obviously wrong.

Could some other usages on this page be lowered? Well, yes actually. In line with that book's usage and indeed with MOS, when we are talking about a/the flag of the union, and not specifically the Union Flag, we could lowercase them. But here's my issue with that: You, an editor who takes capitalisation very seriously, have got it wrong on this page already.[2] This page is edited by many people with far less understanding of the guidelines than you, so if we carefully change a few of the mentions to flag instead of Flag, where the subtleties suggest that is correct, some helpful editor will come along and add the caps back. We will have an unstable situation of flip-flopping on all those subtle cases where we could be talking about union flags or the Union Flag, and that is just a waste of everyone's time.

So, we have incontrovertible evidence that the flag is the Union Flag. It is called that. Even the book you cite in evidence against both calls the flag that and cites other works that call it that. We should just WP:IAR for the few subtle cases where you would be technically right, because it doesn't make the page better in any discernible way to do that, and these capitalisation fights are a waste of everyone's time. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 09:54, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

I didn't downcase it everywhere. I left capped where they came from quotes, titles, and such. And I didn't downcase the bolded Union flag in the lead. That was already downcased, and is still lowercase after your revert of my consistency fixes. Again, nobody denies that it is called the Union Flag. It's also commonly called that without capitalizing flag. The issue is just about styling it per WP's house style. Dicklyon (talk) 11:00, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

If we are splitting hairs, I didn't revert your edit. Someone else did. But look, you did this: "Name = Union Jack/Union flag" and that is incontrovertibly an error. I have also put the page text back to where it was before the 15 Feb edit changed those two in the lead. Also an error. Now we are consistent again. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 11:07, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean by "incontrovertibly an error". Seems right to me, with "Union Jack" being a proper name (even if it wasn't one initially, it's treated as a proper name in sources), and "Union flag" a descriptive name. Dicklyon (talk) 06:29, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

I'll look forward to you changing United States to read "United states of America" then. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 09:25, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Look here for why that's not likely to happen. Compare this and this. This is how MOS:CAPS says we determine what's a proper name, not by any particular theoretical or logical cogitation. Dicklyon (talk) 10:35, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Are you sure that ngrams only refers to reliable sources? Martin of Sheffield (talk) 10:46, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Ngrams are rubbish. This is where I came in, and it wasn't just me saying it. This is a case of WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 10:49, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

You mean that including children's first readers doesn't improve an argument? Shock! Horror! :-o Martin of Sheffield (talk) 11:00, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

The n-grams clearly show why we treat Union Jack and United States of America and such as proper names. No amount of disparaging the data source is going to have any effect on that interpretation. Going the other way, they show that "Union flag" is not consistently capitalized. Further investigation, more context, etc, is then useful to see if there are contexts in which "Union flag" lowercase is not referring to the same topic as "Union Flag" capped. So I looked into that and found some at the low percentage. In the context of "the Union flag" and "the Union Flag", there's not much not referring to this same "Union Jack", yet lowercase is much more common, and has been always. Before 1860, "union" was also usually lowercase, but that's too long ago to care about. It's just data, not rubbish. In terms of other uses for "the Union flag" I did find a few referring to the US Union in the Civil War (one instance in each of 2 books so far) and one capped "the Union Flag" referring to that (many instances in one book, which all get counted in the n-gram stats); so the effect is small, compared to the great majority of books referring to the British Union flag, and probably not in the direction that would make a correction in support of capitalization. Dicklyon (talk) 23:00, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

N-grams are often useful, when done properly, but their utility goes down the more likely it is there'll be false positives. Even if Dicklyon is good at weeding out false positive by doing crafty searches, if other editors are skeptical then they are, and there's not much to be done for that. So, it's probably more productive (though more tedious) in this case to check for use of these terms in various news sources via Google News, and usage in recenti-ish academic material via Google Scholar and scholar.archive.org (even for stuff not available in full free text, enough of a quotation is visible to be useful in most cases). Maybe also modern book sources on Britain via Internet archive (reading the modern ones, that are not old stuff out of copyright, requires a free account there, and you "check out" a book for up to an hour; remember to click "Return" on it when done, or your check-out prevents anyone else in the world from reading it until you hour expires). Probably also in modern vexillology works (but rule out those that blindly capitalize every single reference to every flag; they won't be evidentiary of whether to capitalize any term versus any other, but written in field-guide style, using capitalization as a form of visual emphasis). Old sources, like before about 1980, aren't going to be any use, since standards of capitalization across English generally have markedly shifted in the last few generations. It's important not to cherry pick. A common but pointless exercise in in discussions like this is supporters of capitalization just highlighting some works they can find that capitalize, as if that "proves" something; while it demonstrates that someone somewhere like to capitalize something, it does nothing of any kind to show relative frequency. The way to do this is to start at the top of the first page of search results and assess the usage in each hit in series (other than stuff that doesn't qualify as an independent RS, or which is a false positive), then move on to page 2, etc. Takes a long time, but it will not be dubious.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:08, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

• Support lowercase, no evidence of consistent capitalization in RS—many recent GS results are lowercase. (t · c) buidhe 19:19, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

  Erm... this again is a bit rubbish as analysis, sorry. Once again, and we have covered this above, there are union flags that are not the Union Flag. Simply presenting a set of hits in Google Scholar, without commentary, is not helpful. Let's go through these. I will only address the first page of hits, because, you know, life is too short.

  1. [3] - Union Flag - Uppercase.
  2. [4] - Uppercase
  3. [5] - This is talking about the American flag of the union
  4. [6] This appears to be the ulster unionist union flag, and not the Union Flag.
  5. [7] The Guardian asked its readers to design a new union flag - that is, a new flag of the union. See discussion above. When talking about a flag of the union, and not specifically the Union Flag it should indeed be lower case.
  6. [8] - Uppercase
  7. [9] "A British Union flag" is parsed as a flag of the British Union. That is okay, especially from an American source where Union has another meaning in the piece and needs disambiguation. The other uses are about the American striped union flag.
  8. [10] Refers to the American union flag.
  9. [11] - Shows usage as per discussion above. It capitalises when speaking of the Union Flag specifically and uses lower case when talking generically about jacks and flags of the union
  10. [12] The British Union flag flew 365 days a year over Belfast City Hall, that is the flag of the British Union. The article is very deliberate in its usage, in fact, speaking generically of the flag of the British Union, and only using a name (Union Jack) in two direct quotations. This is because it is a piece about sectarian politics in Northern Ireland, and it is clear the authors want to avoid an association that could be misinterpreted by one community. Thus it is the flag of the British Union, a term that also avoids calling it the flag of the United Kingdom (a key point as the controversy was that one side argued that it was the flag of the UK, and NI is part of the UK, and thus the flag should be flown every day.) Now this usage is in agreement with MOS:CAPS (as is the American source above that does the same). If we are talking about the flag of the British Union as a symbol, or type of flag, then we are not naming it. In such cases it is correctly in lower case.

  So these are all capitalised consistently with it being the Union Flag.

  If anyone else is going to try quibbling on this issue, it is incumbent on you to do the research It is not good enough to reverse the burden of proof, as one editor has suggested. ngrams are rubbish and throwing unannotated lists of Google hits is also rubbish. Why is the British head of state wrong in calling it the Union Flag?[13] If you can't answer that question, it should stay as it is. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 10:38, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

• Lowercase Union flag: This is clearly a descriptive term - ie the flag of the Union [of Great Britain ...]. It is not a true proper noun|name. There is no good reason to capitalise X Flag (such as the American flag) even though we might see that in some publication - particularly government sources. Such a practice is for emphasis or importance but we don't do that per MOS:SIGNIFCAPS. Per MOS:CAPS, caps are not necessary in such a case. Incidentally, MOS:CAPS creates a burden to show that caps are necessary and defaults to lowercase. We might capitalise if this were consistently done in sources. Noting the comment by SMcC, the critera given in MOS:CAPS is in essence a statistical question. Statistically small samples can be misleading (as immediately above). I also note that the Belfast City Hall flag protests refers to the flying of the Union Jack. Perusing through a half-dozen pages of search results from Google Scholar (from 2020 on - excluding sources not pertaining to the Union Jack) one clearly sees mixed capitalisation (perhaps 50%). One even sees cases of union flag, which is not surprising since union is neither the formal name of the union nor the common shortened form - United Kingnom. Cinderella157 (talk) 03:00, 29 June 2024 (UTC)