Two Countries, One Flag: How Chad and Romania Ended Up Identical

Put the flags of Chad and Romania side by side and most people cannot tell them apart. Both are vertical tricolours of blue, yellow and red, in that order, in almost the same proportions. The only difference is a slightly deeper shade of blue on the Chadian flag, and even that is not reliable across manufacturers.

How it happened

Romania's colours go back to the 1860s, drawn from the arms of the historic principalities that united to form the country. Chad adopted its flag in 1959, on the eve of independence from France. The designers wanted the French blue, white and red but could not use white, because the neighbouring Mali had already taken the green, yellow and red of pan-Africanism and a white stripe would have clashed with another regional flag. Yellow went in instead, and the result was, by coincidence, Romania's flag.

For three decades nobody much minded, because Romania under Ceausescu flew a version with the communist coat of arms in the middle. When that emblem was removed after the 1989 revolution, the two flags became effectively identical.

The complaint

In 2004, as Romania prepared to join the European Union, Chad raised the matter at the United Nations and asked for a review. Romania's president at the time replied that the flag had been Romanian since 1848 and would stay as it was. No ruling followed, because no international body has the authority to award a colour scheme to anyone. Both flags still fly.

They are not the only ones

Monaco and Indonesia have the same two horizontal bands of red over white, differing only in proportion. Haiti and Liechtenstein discovered at the 1936 Berlin Olympics that their flags matched; Liechtenstein added a gold crown the following year. Flag design has a limited vocabulary and a very long history, and collisions are inevitable.

In the Match the Flags round, this pair catches almost everyone the first time.