Flag: Ireland

It means Ireland, the Irish, or something Irish. In a message it names the country, backs an Irish side, locates a photo or says "I'm Irish" or "my family is". On March 17 it floods feeds worldwide beside shamrocks and pints, because St Patrick's Day is celebrated far beyond Ireland, above all by the huge Irish diaspora in the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia.

The flag itself has a story worth knowing. The tricolour was first presented in 1848 by Thomas Francis Meagher of the Young Ireland movement, modelled on the French tricolour he admired. Green stands for the older Gaelic and Catholic nationalist tradition, orange for the Protestant followers of William of Orange, and white for lasting peace between the two. It became the symbol of the republic after it flew over the General Post Office in Dublin during the Easter Rising of 1916, and the 1937 Constitution made it the national flag.

Irish people often call it "the green, white and gold", but the official colour is orange, and the government's own guidelines say so. Calling the third stripe gold quietly erases the Protestant tradition the flag was designed to include.

Is it the flag of all of Ireland?

Officially it is the flag of the Republic of Ireland only. Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, whose official flag is the Union Jack 🇬🇧, and it has no flag emoji of its own. In Northern Ireland the tricolour is a nationalist symbol: cherished by one community, rejected by the other. Using 🇮🇪 for Belfast, Derry or a Northern Irish person can read as a political statement, so when you are not sure, write the place name instead.

Sport blurs the line. The Republic has its own football team, but the Ireland rugby team represents the whole island, which is why its emblem is the shamrock rather than a flag; fans still send 🇮🇪 freely on match day, and nobody minds in that setting.