pennant

The word pennant has two converging sources, and their convergence is a small etymological event worth unpacking. The nautical pennant — the long, tapering flag flown from the masthead of a warship — derives from the Welsh and Brythonic Celtic word pen, meaning 'head' or 'summit,' which appears in dozens of Welsh and Welsh-adjacent English place names: Penrith (red head), Penzance (holy headland), Penmaenmawr (head of the great stone), and many others. The Welsh pen entered English maritime vocabulary as a term for the top of a mast — the masthead — and from there the flag that flew at the masthead became a pennant. The Brythonic element is one of the clearest examples of a Celtic geographical term generalizing into a piece of technical vocabulary.

The second source is the Latin penna (feather, quill, pen), which passed into Old French as pennon — a long, tapering flag of the kind carried by medieval knights, shaped like a feather or leaf. English pennon came from this French source and meant specifically the heraldic flag attached to a lance. The two words — the Welsh-derived masthead term and the French-derived lance-flag term — collided in English and merged, their similar sounds and related meanings (both naming a type of flag) producing the single word pennant that covered both senses. By the 17th century pennant was the dominant form for both the nautical masthead flag and the decorative triangular flag of sporting and ceremonial contexts.

In the Royal Navy, the pennant took on precise technical significance. The commissioned pennant — a long, tapering flag with the St George's Cross at the hoist and a fly that narrows to a point — has flown continuously from every commissioned Royal Navy warship since the mid-17th century. It is never hauled down while a ship is in commission, even when the ship is in port, and its length depends on the class and seniority of the vessel. The pennant number painted on naval vessels — the identification code visible on their hull — takes its name from the same word. Every British warship that has fought in every naval engagement from the Dutch Wars to the Falklands has flown a pennant from its masthead.

In American sports usage, pennant took a different direction. A pennant in American baseball is both the physical triangular flag awarded to the winner of each league's championship and the championship itself — winning the pennant means reaching the World Series. Since the late 19th century 'pennant race' has been one of the most used phrases in American sports journalism, describing the late-season competition for the league championship. The Welsh word for a hilltop or headland, filtered through naval vocabulary, has become the American word for the highest achievement in professional baseball. Pen, the Celtic head-word, flies from every stadium where a championship flag is raised.