Calling the damn battle banner the Stars & Bars has always irritated the living hell out of me and I’ve pointed out the error more than once. I don’t give a damn how the language is a living thing and subject to change and all that BS; the damned battle flag is NOT the freaking Stars & Bars and never will be. And I ain’t never heard the Flag of the USA called the “The Stars & Bars.” Damnitall anyway, if someone talks about a bicycle, I know what they mean. If it turns out that they are really talking about a television set, then world as we know it has turned upside down and inside out: Call a thing by its right and proper name or don’t talk about it at all.
There’s already a perfectly good and correct nickname for the rebel flag, anyway. It’s the “Southern Cross.”
Except, of course, that the Southern Cross is actually a constellation in the Southern sky.
Yes, it is the name of a constellatoin in the Southern sky. It’s also a nickname for the Confederate battle flag. I’ve heard it several times before; it is also mentioned in the link in the OP.
Context usually allows one to know whether it’s being used to describe a flag or a group of stars.
People are missing Cisco’s point about the US flag. He didn’t say it is or ever was… what he said is that it could rightfully be called the Stars and Bars and he’s right… its design has stars and bars in it. Just like the battleflag of the Confederacy and its national flag both.
Personally, I don’t care. Like it or not, Stars and Bars has entered the lexicon to mean the battleflag and getting annoyed about it is just a waste of time and energy.
Plus you can then tie it in with a rousing rendition of “The Red Flag” and end the act with Meg Thatcher coming in and rescuing civilization 
True enough.
However, I will note the correction and will attempt to use the proper term for the flag. However, you have to understand that for many of us, this really isn’t a big issue. We don’t really give a shit.
Did you read my post? Or his? Or RTFirefly’s? Firefly said that the language changes all the time, unless you’re French. Wiggum said that was BS. I said BS to his BS. DON’T put words in my mouth!
OK fuckers, time to eat shit.
From my brand-spanking-new bought with xmas gift card 315,000 word Merriam-Webster Unabridged New Universal Dictionary:
Most. Pointless. Rant. Ever. (and wrong.)
Dictionaries are descriptive, not proscriptive. People call the Confederate battle flag the Stars and Bars, so the dictionaries list that definition. The OP and others in this thread admitted that people call it the Stars and Bars. In fact, that was the point of the rant. Thus, it should not be surprising to anybody that that definition is in the dictionary. Nor should it alter anyone’s opinion to find it there (though perhaps the fact that it is there should cause the dissenters to realize that it has so far entered into common usage that it is beyond correction).
Dictionaries are widely used as cites, especially on the SDMB. They list common and correct usages, and are all we really have to refer to in regards to the proper usage of words and occasionally terms. If Webster says Stars and Bars is a correct descriptor of the Confederate Battle Flag, but wiggumpuppy the SDMB guest says it’s not, who are you more likely to agree with you?
Someone somewhere may have called it “The Southern Cross” but it’s really St Andrews Cross.
And it wasn’t meant for the South itself. It was designed for The Army of Northern Virginia.
Get y’alls flag history straight.
The fact remains that the original usage was different, and it remains different with many today. It never would have occured to me, for instance, to call anything the Stars and Bars but this. I’m not being pedantic; that’s my original usage. I imagine that usage is the same for many others (especially Southerners), and when they meet someone whose usage is different, they perceive it as wrong. To the one it is wrong, to the other it isn’t.
Obviously this isn’t something that it is useful to argue about. “Correctness” depends on one’s own independent usage, which is aquired from the community.
Reeder: It may have been designed for the Army of Northern Virginia, but it obviously was adopted for use by the entire Confederacy for use as a battle flag, a naval jack, and on the later national flag: the “Stainless Banner”.
And can’t it be both “the Southern Cross” and a St. Andrew’s Cross? (This is the St. Andrew’s Cross.)
Sorry, I forgot to post that the origin is listed as 1861. The term Stars and Bars has always been associated with the Naval Jack/Battle Flag.
Well, Merriam-Webster Online defines it like this:
Always??? I’ll need a cite for this.
If we want to start calling the Confederate Battle Flag the Stars and Bars, fine, but what are we going to call that other flag? You know, the Stars and Bars. What are we going to call it? The Confederate-Flag-Formerly-Known-as-the-Stars-and-Bars?
C’mon, guys. We’ve have already had the *symbolism * of the flag usurped. Are you going to make us *rename * the damned thing now? Wasn’t Sherman’s march to the sea enough for you? 
[completely pointless aside]
For the record, the US National Champion cycling jersey is also called the Stars and Bars.
[/completely pointless aside]
I gave you a cite. Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary. It’s much more thorough than www.m-w.com. I’m sure they have one at your local library.
Well, I’m not going to go to the library, so I’ll have to take your word for it. Still I’m skeptical that it says anything like “The term Stars and Bars has *always * been associated with the Naval Jack/Battle Flag.” Can you post the exact passage that claims this?
Well, I don’t have a copy of the M-W unabridged dictionary, so I had to pull out my Random House unabridged dictionary. The definition it gives is surprisingly like the M-W definition :
the flag adopted by the Confederate Sates of American, consisting of two broad horizontal bars of red seperated by one of white, with a blue union marked with a circle of stars, one for each Confederate state. Cf. Southern Cross (def. 2). [1861, Amer]
cf. means compare. Frankly, I believe that the ‘see’ at the end of your dictionary’s entry means the same damn thing. It doesn’t mean that ‘Southern Cross’ is a synonym for the Stars and Bars.
You’re full of shit and can’t read a god-damn dictionary.
There is a group of people who were/are very upset about the recent flag change in our state. I had made up my mind that they had picked the stupidest thing possible to get worked up about, as far as flags were concerned.
Looks like I was wrong.