From the Latin vexillum (flag) and

greek λόγος - logos (knowledge) .

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It is a young discipline, mainly developed from the second half of the 20th century, when the German Ottfried Neubecker began to call it Flaggenkunde. However, it was the American Whitney Smith, professor of Political Science at Boston University, who gave it the definitive impetus, coining the English term vexillology in 1957 and publishing it on paper for the first time in 1958, in The Arab magazine. World (vol 5, no. 10, Oct. 1958, pp. 12-13).