Iran’s coat-of-arms looks like a stylized graphic representation of a particular sexual act performed in pron[sic] and, one hopes, rarely in the real world. I won’t say it, but it rhymes with kittysuckin’.
Here’s the money shot, so to speak.
And Ahmadinejad can just suck it, and suck it hard.
Someone should tell Kiribati that the Settlers of Catan want their logo back.
Coats of arms were, in many cases, pre-existing to flags. Spain for example had a coat of arms before it had a flag (and our flag includes the current coat of arms); our flag started its life as the combat flag for the Christian side in the battle of Lepanto and wasn’t used as “the flag of Spain” until the XVIII century.
Well, let’s not forget that the Spanish arms, like the UK, resulted from quartering everything but Grandma’s goat onto the same shield:
Leon: a lion, natch
Castile: a castle (also logical)
Aragon: gold and red stripes (Modeled on Ferdinand’s favorite pajamas?)
Navarre: what looks like a spiderweb of chains that’s trapped an emerald (Is there a story behind that, Nava?)
Grenada: a pomegranate, stuck in at the bottom of the shield
–and the Bourbon fleurs-de-lys stuck in the middle to celebrate the end of the War of the Spanish Succession.
It’s probably a good thing that Portugal regained its independence in 1640 – trying to squeeze one thing more onto that shield would have produced an explosion of heraldic insignia and body parts. 
By the way, Vancouver Dopers: what is it with the B.C. provincial flag? It looks like they didn’t even try, just threw together two completely contradictory ideas and said we’ll use them both, one atop the other.
D’oh!! :smack: I knew that. Chalk it up to an “oops!” in typing. (At least I called Eboue a Creole, which would at least point at French Guiana/Guadeloupe/Martinique instead of the Guinea Coast of Africa.)
Oh my, we got someone who asked for it!
Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, 1212. An alliance of the 3 Christian kingdoms fights the Moors in the canyon called Despeñaperros (lit. “drop them dogs down the side of the mountain”; I’ve been through it on the old road and it’s not a good road for people with weak tummies). The moor general Miramamolin is in a large tent surrounded by warrior-slaves, guys whose only purpose in life is to fight; they are chained in place. The gigantic Navarrese king, Sancho VII (the Strong) reaches the tent and rips the chains off the floor, freeing the slaves who, awed by his size and strength, stop fighting.
He brought back as mementos: twenty of those warriors who’d asked to join him, a length of the chains and the emerald that had decorated Miramamolin’s turban. The chains and emerald are kept in the museum at Roncesvalles (the point where the Road to Santiago enters Navarra from France and where Sancho and his French-born wife are buried). The emerald is over 2" wide, circular and buffed but uncut; it’s not a “true emerald” but a “mother emerald”. This means that it wouldn’t be considered a real emerald by current gemologists, being the wrong crystalographic form, but it’s got tiny real emeralds inside and anyway Miramamolin had paid a bundle for it. The original chains are iron and so black, but the emerald itself is encased in gold and has some golden chains.
The red background is supposed to be for honor unto death and stuff like that; the fact that it makes a nice contrast with the golden chains is irrelevant. We also like to make the joke that, since our flag and shield are blood-red, a Navarrese can never be far from his flag.
As for Aragon: the stripes actually come from Catalonia.
Charlemagne’s possessions included the Marca Catalana, in the NE of Spain (the term “Marquis” comes from “Marca”). The first Counts there were all his vassals. Shortly after the Moors invaded the Peninsula, His Imperial Frankishness took a trip south of the Pyrinees which included a battle in the Marca.
One of the Counts, Wifre el Vellut aka Gofre el Velloso aka Hairy Wilfred of Barcelona, fought very valiantly but fell, wounded by several arrows in a way that meant slow-but-sure death. Charlemagne had him taken to his own tent and told him to ask for anything he could provide; Wifre said “sir, all your knights have their shields, but my people don’t”.*
The Emperor wet his fingers on the Counts blood, turned and passed his hand over a plain golden shield that was there. “With your blood you paid, let your blood be your people’s shield.”
At first, the different Counts from Catalonia were all independent fellows who laid their loyalties wherever they felt like it; the Count of Barcelona was a sort of Primus Inter Pares but there were times when Manresa or Tortosa had more weight. By the year 1000 (earlier but I want to make sure I don’t get spanked for giving a date that’s too early), though, Catalonia had pretty much been absorbed by the Crown of Aragon, mostly through marriages. The bars of Catalonia, being an easy-to-make standard, quite unique, and easy to see, became the bars of Aragon.
Every part of Spain that’s ever been part of the Crown of Aragon includes some variants of the Bars in its flag and its coat of arms.
Actually, “coat of arms”, when used by a layperson, can mean one of two things. It’s either the shield itself (which in English heraldic language (a mishmash of Latin, Old French, Middle English and modern English) is called the escutcheon (which is Latin for “shield”)) or the whole shebang: escutcheon, supporters, crest, motto, mantle, ground and differences.
Nava, thanks for reminding me why I really signed up for the SDMB. Besides all the arguments, wisecracks and cat pictures, it’s nice to have my ignorance fought once in a while. You did so in an informative and easy to read manner. Bien hecho.
Ditto to what OneCentStamp said, good history lesson Nava. I’m sure most of the more obscure and incomprehensible images on assorted standards have quite a history behind them but not quite as rich and colorful as that one (or at least not as well put).
What’s with the red hat on the pole? A couple of the flags in this thread have one? 
The Phrygian cap, the symbol of the freed slave and accordingly of proletarian revolution (see French same).
Contradictory how? Very easy: it was the westernmost part of the British empire, so they showed a setting sun surmounted by the Union Jack and crown. The motto goes along nicely: splendor sine occasu, splendour that never sets.
I read that originally the setting sun was on top, but then someone objected that that was ‘the sun setting on the British Empire’, which of course was a vile slander, and, even though such an event would of course never happen, they changed the flag.
and his name is Luigi.
[unnecessary correction]That is NOT a penis. It’s a sheathed Khanjar- a word which refers to several dozen varieties of knife from South Asia to North Africa.
The Omani variety is a heavily curved blade, although not quite as curved as the sheath would suggest. It’s shaped a little like the tooth on the left of this page.
That’s alright. Here in Florida, we swear we didn’t just steal one of the the finalists from the “design the Seal of Hawaii” contest…
“Yes, our natives wore skirts!”
Isn’t that the 18th-century equivalent of “whatever”? (Imagine it said in a bored stoner voice.)
You think you’ve got problems. Try getting lion or unicorn steak at the local market…
Nava and all the Defenders of the B.C. Flag: thanks a million! I enjoy those Paul Harvey type background stories on why things are what they are immensely. For what it’s worth, Eleanor of Aquitaine (sequentially Louis VIII of France’s and Henry II of England’s wife, and heiress to Aquitaine, Poitou, and a few other things in her own right, the Kate Hepburn role in The Lion in Winter) was descended from a long line of men named, in alternating sequence, Raymond Berenguer and Berenguer Raymond (both given names, of course) who were Dukes of Aquitaine and before that Counts of Barcelona – presumably descendants of Hairy Wilfred – who would thus be an ancestor of Elizabeth II and most of the rest of European royalty of today.
Check out Illinois. The eagle is fleeing Peoria in a panic while that foul corn-burning plant goes up in flames in the distance. I feel for you, little eagle.
