Armenia's National Symbols and What They Actually Mean
Most explanations of the Armenian flag say red stands for blood shed. Armenia's own official definition says something broader, and the difference is worth knowing. Here is what the five national symbols mean, according to the state that defines them.
The flag: red means more than blood
The flag is three horizontal bands of equal width, red, blue and orange from top to bottom. The law on the state flag was adopted on August 24, 1990, and replaced by a new law on June 15, 2006.
The official reading of the colors is specific. Red stands for the Armenian Highland, the people's continued struggle for survival, the keeping of the Christian faith, and Armenia's independence and freedom. Blue stands for the will to live beneath peaceful skies. Orange stands for the creative talent and hard-working nature of the people.
The blood reading is popular, and it is not baseless, since struggle and survival are named. But it narrows the color down to grief. The official wording, published in the President of Armenia's account of the state symbols, puts land, faith and freedom in the same stripe.
The coat of arms: a mountain Armenia does not govern
At the center of the shield is Mount Ararat with Noah's Ark on it, surrounded by the arms of four royal dynasties of historic Armenia. An eagle holds the shield on the left, a lion on the right. Below sit a sword, a branch, a sheaf of wheat, a chain and a ribbon.
The design goes back to the First Republic of 1918 to 1920 and is the work of the architect Alexander Tamanian and the artist Hakob Kojoyan. Armenia readopted it by law on April 19, 1992.
It is worth sitting with what that means. The republic's central emblem is a mountain that has lain inside Turkey since the 1920s. That is not an oversight. Ararat's hold on Armenian identity was never a question of jurisdiction.
Mer Hayrenik was not written for Armenia
The anthem is Mer Hayrenik, Our Fatherland, adopted on July 1, 1991. The words are by Mikael Nalbandian, the music by Barsegh Kanachian.
Nalbandian's text began life as a poem called Song of an Italian Girl, written in the voice of a girl watching her country's flag. It was reworked for Armenia later. An anthem adapted from someone else's struggle for independence is an unusually honest origin story.
The alphabet: 38 letters, or 39
Mesrop Mashtots created the Armenian alphabet in 405, by tradition with the help of Sahak the Great. He designed 36 letters. Two more, օ and ֆ, were added in the Middle Ages, which brings the count to 38, the figure Britannica gives for the modern script.
The count of 39 comes from the orthographic reform of the 1920s in Soviet Armenia, which treats the ligature և as a letter in its own right. Western Armenian never adopted that reform. Both numbers are defensible, and the one you were taught usually says where your family went to school.
That history is part of why the letters work so well in a room. They are legible to Armenians, quietly graphic to everyone else, and they carry a date most nations cannot match. Our lettered designs are in the Armenian Alphabet collection.
Which symbols belong at home
Not every national symbol suits a living room. The flag and the coat of arms are state emblems. They read as civic, and they sit more naturally in an office, a church hall or a community center.
Ararat, the alphabet and the pomegranate carry the same identity without the officialdom, which is why they are what most Armenian American homes actually display. The pomegranate has its own long history in Armenian art, older than any of the state symbols here.
Symbols hold up better when you know what they say. If you want the ones that speak without needing a caption, the Ararat and pomegranate designs are in the Pomegranate & Haykakan Symbols collection.