Flag: Latvia

It means Latvia or Latvian, said with warmth.

In a chat the flag works like a label. Next to a Riga itinerary it means the destination; after "home for Christmas" it usually hints that the sender is Latvian or has Latvian roots; beside a score it means they are cheering for the national team. Latvians abroad often put it in profiles and bios to say where they are from, and friends of Latvia use it to say "thinking of you" on the country's holidays.

Those holidays are when you are most likely to see it: 18 November, Proclamation Day, when Latvia declared independence in 1918; 4 May, when the declaration restoring independence was adopted in 1990; and Jāņi, the midsummer night of 23–24 June, one of the biggest celebrations of the Latvian year, with bonfires, beer, cheese with caraway and oak-leaf crowns. Latvians are famously passionate ice hockey fans, so the flag turns up in force during the world championship each spring.

It is rarely tricky. As a state symbol it can carry political weight in news or protest posts, but in everyday chat it reads as ordinary patriotism, and sending it to a Latvian friend on 18 November is simply a nice gesture.

What is the flag it shows?

Dark red, a narrow white stripe, dark red: carmine, not bright red.

Latvia's flag has three horizontal bands in the proportion 2:1:2, so the white stripe is half the height of each red one. The red is deliberately dark, a carmine shade, and the thin stripe is the quickest way to tell it from Austria's flag, which has three equal stripes, usually drawn in a brighter red.

The idea behind it is old. A medieval rhymed chronicle, usually dated to the late 13th century, mentions a red banner with a white stripe carried by Latvian warriors, and the modern flag was modelled on that account. A popular tale says a wounded chief was wrapped in a white sheet; the edges soaked up his blood and the middle stayed clean. Historians treat that story as legend, not the real origin.

It became the national flag after independence in 1918 and was made official in 1921. Under Soviet rule from 1940 it was banned; using or keeping it was punishable, and some families hid flags in attics. It came out again in the late 1980s, flew in the Baltic Way human chain of 1989 and was restored as the state flag in February 1990, months before the declaration restoring independence. For Latvians it is a symbol of surviving that era, which is why many feel it is more than decoration.