Yes, how a flag is perceived is what it means, not it’s original intentions. This is a frequent debate in Ireland, because a lot of us recognise if we reunify with Northern Ireland we’ll have to give up the tricolour as the national flag. The meaning of the Irish tricolour (green, white, orange) is the hope of peace between the nationalist Catholics (green) and unionist Protestants (orange), with the white obviously being the peace bit. By official meaning it is far more representative of Northern Ireland than the republic, where there are no problems at all between Catholics and Protestants. But to northern Protestants it is the flag that adorned IRA coffins, so they hate it and wouldn’t be a part of a country that flew it. Their perception of the flag’s meaning is far more important than its actual meaning.

The difference being?