Who is jolly roger?
The name ‘Jolly Roger’ dates from 1775 to 85. There are several theories about the name of the pirate flag, Jolly Roger: “One theory is that it comes from the French term “joli rouge”, (“pretty red”) which the English corrupted into “Jolly Roger” or simply “Hodge”. While it is true that there were a series of “red flags” that were feared as much as, or more than, “black flags”, this seems unlikely because the red flag was not adopted from the French and it is not likely that the black flag was either, and there is no primary source reference to the name “Joli Rouge” for any flag, piratical or otherwise. One theory is that when a ship was approached under false colors closely enough for the deception to be unnecessary any longer, the pirates would “run up the red flag”, time to kill everyone. Yet another theory states that “Jolly Roger” is an English corruption of “Ali Raja”, the name of a Tamil pirate. And another theory is that it was taken from a nickname for the devil, “Old Roger”.
