Flag of Guyana
Guyana’s flag, the Golden Arrowhead, is green with a gold arrowhead edged in white running from the pole to the fly, and a red triangle edged in black at the pole. Guyana’s constitution says the green is the country’s farmland and forests, the white its rivers and waters, the gold arrow its mineral wealth and forward thrust, the black edge the endurance that will sustain it, and the red the zeal and dynamism of building the nation.
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How to read it
Article 4 of Guyana’s constitution makes the national flag the flag known as “The Golden Arrow Head”, as set out in the Second Schedule. The schedule gives the heraldic description presented by the Garter King of Arms of the College of Arms in England: a green field with a gold triangle running the whole length from the hoist, edged in white, and on it a red triangle edged in black, from the same base. It also explains the colours and fixes the shape: 3 by 5 on land and 1 by 2 at sea. The constitution makes it the duty of every citizen and every person in Guyana to respect the flag. The flag was adopted in 1966.
Also searched as: flag of guyana, golden arrowhead, guyana flag, guyana flag meaning, guyanese flag, guyanese flag meaning.
Who designed the Golden Arrowhead
Whitney Smith, an American who went on to found the study of flags (vexillology), designed it. Guyana’s Department of Public Information, in its condolences when Smith died in 2016, said he designed the Golden Arrowhead in 1960 as a political science undergraduate at Harvard: at 20 he wrote to Cheddi Jagan to ask what the new country’s flag would be, Jagan invited him to submit ideas, and they were adopted with some modifications. The Flag Institute’s obituary dates his design of the flag to 1966, the year it was adopted, and the Briscoe Center for American History, which holds his flag collection, calls him the designer of the national flag of Guyana.
Read next
- Next in South American flagsFlag of ParaguayParaguay’s flag is red, white and blue in equal horizontal stripes with a round emblem in the centre of the white, and its two sides are different. The front carries the national coat of arms, a yellow star in a wreath of palm and olive inside the words “República del Paraguay”; the back carries the Treasury seal, a lion below a red cap of liberty on a pike with the motto “Paz y Justicia” (Peace and Justice). The newspaper ABC Color writes that the colours came to be read as justice (red), peace (white) and liberty (blue).
- The same shape in African flagsFlag of the ComorosThe Comoros flag is four horizontal stripes, yellow, white, red and blue from the top, with a green triangle along the pole holding a white crescent and four white stars in a line between its tips. Norway’s Store norske leksikon explains the crescent as the symbol of Islam and the four stars as the four islands of the Comoros; Lex says the four stripes are said to stand for the islands too.
More south American flags
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols drawn with squares and rectangles or triangles.
Sources
- Guyana 1980 (rev. 2016) Constitution, Constitution of the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, 1980 (rev. 2016), Articles 4 and 6A and Second Schedule (English text, Constitute Project), Constitute Project, Art. 4; Second Schedule, The National Flag
- Designer of Golden Arrow Head passes away (Stabroek News), Stabroek News, 25 November 2016, Stabroek News, Whole article
- In Memoriam: Whitney Smith (Briscoe Center for American History), Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin, Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin, Whole page
- In memoriam: Whitney Smith (Flag Institute), Flag Institute news, November 2016, Flag Institute, Whole page
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 13, 2026. How we research
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