American Flag Tattoo Ideas, Designs and Meaning

What a american flag tattoo means

A flag tattoo is worn for one of three things, and this page holds all of them. The first is the country: pride, a birthplace, or a citizenship taken on later, which is what the Statue of Liberty's torch with the flag behind it tends to say. The second is service, in the forces, the police or a fire department, which is why so many of these flags come with an eagle. The third is a death, and for that the flag is folded.

The design carries its own arithmetic. Thirteen stripes, seven red and six white, stand for the colonies that declared independence; the stars stand for the states, and the resolution the Continental Congress passed on 14 June 1777 called them a new constellation. No colour was given a meaning then. The usual reading comes from Charles Thomson's 1782 notes on the Great Seal: white for purity and innocence, red for hardiness and valour, blue for vigilance, perseverance and justice.

The folded triangle is the memorial reading, and it is exact. At a military funeral the flag from the coffin is folded thirteen times until only the blue field and its stars show, then handed to the next of kin. The triangle is often said to recall the tricorn hats of the Revolution, and the meanings read out for each fold are a tradition rather than any official text. The realism flag on this page has a rosary and crucifix looped over one corner, a Catholic family's version of the same goodbye.

Condition changes the message. Crisp on a pole, the flag is ceremony. Frayed and torn, like the stippled flag here, it has come through something; the flag that flew over Fort McHenry in 1814, the one Francis Scott Key wrote about, is kept at the Smithsonian with pieces missing, snipped off as keepsakes. Draped over a skull it is a death in service, and a flag whose free end breaks into a flock of birds is letting go.

Where the design comes from

Stars were added as states joined, and there have been twenty-seven versions; the fifty-star flag has flown since 4 July 1960, the year after Hawaii became a state. Sailors wore it early: the protection certificates issued to American seamen from 1796 listed their tattoos as identifying marks, flags and eagles among them. The Statue of Liberty, whose torch appears here, was dedicated in 1886 and had that torch replaced in 1986. By the Second World War the flag was a fixture of American flash, carried by swallows and eagles on the sheets sailors chose from in Honolulu.

Choosing yours

• Decide which way it flies. A veteran may want the Army's right-sleeve version, stars forward, on a right arm; ask for it on purpose, because a mirrored stencil does the same by accident, and one flipped top to bottom puts the union down, which the Flag Code keeps for a signal of dire distress.
• Fifty filled stars in a canton under about 4 cm run together as the ink spreads, and thirteen thin stripes merge. The minimalist and linework flags here draw the canton as dots or a few outlines instead, and still read at once.
• Red is the pigment most often behind tattoo allergies; if you have reacted to it before, a black and grey flag avoids it.

Common questions