Serbian Flag: 3 Useful Facts You Need To Know

There is a lot to talk about when it comes to the Serbian flag. Serbia is one of the oldest countries in Europe, and its flag has changed a number of times through its history.

Here are three facts that explain what you are looking at: where the flag came from, what its three colors stand for, and what the crown, the eagle and the four shapes on the shield actually mean.

What Does The Serbian Flag Look Like?

Serbia has a three-colored flag, with red, blue and white bands, a two-headed eagle with a Serbian crown on the top, and a coat of arms carrying ‘četiri ocila’ (the red shield in the middle).

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That last name is hard to translate. ‘Četiri’ means four, and ‘ocila’ are the four shapes that look like the letter C on the shield.

1. History Of The Serbian Flag

Serbia is one of the oldest European countries, and the history of its flag is pretty interesting. The flag of Serbia has been changed throughout history a couple of times.

• Medieval flags, and the revolutionary flags used while Serbs were under Turkish rule. There were many of these, especially the revolutionary ones.
• 1835: Serbia adopted its first constitution and almost freed itself from the Turkish empire. The tricolor that the modern flag is based on dates from this point.
• 2006: Serbia became independent again after the union with Montenegro ended.
• 2010: the flag and coat of arms in use today became official in their current form.

If you want the language that goes with the history, Serbian sits very close to two of its neighbours, and our guide to Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian compared covers where they overlap and where they part.

2. Meaning Of The Serbian Flag

The national flag of Serbia has several meanings, and some of them come through its colors and some of them from the Serbian coat of arms.

Serbian people like to call their flag ‘trobojka,’ which means ‘three colors flag’ or ‘tricolor.’ There are only three of them on it: red, blue and white. Below you can check what each color represents.

What Does The Red On The Serbian Flag Mean?

The red color represents blood. It may sound awful, but Serbia has had to go through many wars since it was founded. The most recent step to independence came in 2006, and there have been no wars since.

What Does The Blue On The Serbian Flag Mean?

The blue color represents freedom and infinity. Serbs were always searching for their freedom, and the infinity part comes from somewhere else.

The warriors who fought for this country believed that eternal life awaited them if they died in battle. That is why Serbs like to call themselves a ‘heavenly nation,’ an idea tied to the battle for Kosovo.

What Does The White On The Serbian Flag Mean?

The white color on the Serbian flag represents mothers’ milk. It sounds like it does not make much sense, but the belief was that mothers’ milk would give their children the power to become warriors and heroes.

There are also many old national songs about mothers and their children, and many women are represented as heroes.

3. Serbian Coat Of Arms

The coat of arms has the most interesting story of the three. There are a couple of versions of it, and they are not all the same. On it you can see the crown, the two-headed eagle and the red shield.

One clarification first: if you hear someone say that the four shapes stand for ‘samo sloga Srbina spasava,’ or ‘only unity saves Serbs,’ that is a folk reading rather than the heraldic one, and it is a common mistake.

• The crown. Serbia had kings through much of its history. The monarchy was abolished in 1945 and Serbia is a republic today, with a royal family that has no throne, but the crown stayed on the arms as a reference to that history.
• The two-headed eagle and the cross. Both came from the Byzantine empire. One head looks toward the heavenly kingdom and the other toward the earthly one. Some people also read the eagle as a connection with Heaven, which fits the ‘heavenly people’ idea above.
• The red shield and the four shapes. They are not four S letters. They are ‘četiri ocila,’ four fire-steels, another borrowing from Byzantine heraldry. One traditional reading of them is ‘car careva caruje nad carevima,’ roughly ‘the king of kings reigns over kings,’ though ‘tsar’ or ’emperor’ would be closer than ‘king.’
• The white cross. The cross in the middle of the shield stands for Christianity. The most widely followed religion in Serbia is Orthodox Christianity.

If you want to put some of this vocabulary to use, our list of family vocabulary in Serbian is a good place to start, since family words come up in almost every conversation.

What Is Serbia’s National Anthem?

The national anthem of Serbia is called ‘Bože pravde,’ or ‘God of Justice.’ It dates from 1872, and it became official again in 2006, when only the union of Serbia and Montenegro was left.

What Does Spoken Serbian Sound Like?

Serbia has a strong film tradition, and a clip is one of the easier ways to hear the language at natural speed before you start studying it.

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If Serbian is next on your list, start learning the Serbian language with Ling today.