Can you name the world's island nations?

created by davidr

Enter a nation in the box below
Correctly named nations will show up below
Answers do not have to be guessed in order
Island nation: Country that has no territory on continental landmasses and does not share any of their islands with other countries
Also try: 100 Most Populous Islands

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There are 204 comments for this game.
(Warning: comments may contain spoilers)

Island Countries Quiz

by davidr

Created Feb 11, 2009 in Geography
Featured Feb 11, 2009
Game Plays 170,300

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	sactoshc:	Feb 11th, 2009 at 04:23 GMT		29 points
	Great quiz...working the continent quizzes has been good practice!

	Michael:	Feb 11th, 2009 at 04:24 GMT		148 points
	Why is Cyprus a bonus answer?

	[Deleted]:	Feb 11th, 2009 at 04:29 GMT		45 points
	the united kingdom borders Ireland, so it doesn't qualify

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	HoosierDaddy:	Feb 11th, 2009 at 04:43 GMT		54 points
	I don't see why Cyprus is a bonus answer either, the Turks have no right to be there.

	bsd987:	Feb 11th, 2009 at 04:44 GMT		15 points
	@Michael: Cyprus borders only a territory of another nation. I got all 38, but I honestly never knew Singapore was an island. Got it because of the alphabetical order. Great quiz.

	HoosierDaddy:	Feb 11th, 2009 at 04:45 GMT		37 points
	and the Marshall Islands have been sovereign since '86.

	angie:	Feb 11th, 2009 at 04:51 GMT		16 points
	What about Australia?

	DLJessup:	Feb 11th, 2009 at 04:54 GMT		4 points
	@angie: Australia is considered to be a continent rather than an island.

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	ebg:	Feb 11th, 2009 at 05:11 GMT		23 points
	@ernest, it shares the island with Indonesia

	weizenugb:	Feb 11th, 2009 at 05:20 GMT		42 points
	Great quiz, davidr. You never fail to provide the best geography games on this site. I really appreciate what you do.

	jaspa:	Feb 11th, 2009 at 05:26 GMT		51 points
	Ok, seriously. Read the captions at the top of the quiz. For this quiz, island nations are defined as nations who have no territory on a continental landmass (including Australia) and do not share a land border with another nation. The UK includes Northern Ireland, which borders the independent nation of Ireland. Papua New Guinea shares the island of New Guinea with Indonesia.

	nearlyextinct:	Feb 11th, 2009 at 05:36 GMT		18 points
	Great quiz again. Interesting idea putting Cyprus as a bonus answer. Maybe there should be a quiz with countries that have only one continental border. (countries that have only one border on a continent like Canada)

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	debbiedoesnothin:	Feb 11th, 2009 at 05:56 GMT		6 points
	I need to go back and do Countries of the World and World Capitals again. I had them all memorized but I missed 5 of these.

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	Lucy:	Feb 11th, 2009 at 06:37 GMT		25 points
	we were always taught at school that Australia was the world's biggest island and the smallest continent. moot point.

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	davidr:	Feb 11th, 2009 at 08:34 GMT		16 points
	@Tom B.: Australia is a continental landmass. The Australian mainland is the largest landmass of the continent of Australasia, which is also called Oceania. New Zealand is part of the same continent.

	davebesag:	Feb 11th, 2009 at 08:34 GMT		39 points
	I don't think it's that difficult to understand as long as you read the rules. I didn't and when the UK didn't work decided to see what was wrong!

	davidr:	Feb 11th, 2009 at 08:42 GMT		13 points
	@Michael and HoosierDaddy: The Cypriot government doesn't control the whole of Cyprus: there's the Turkish region and also the British sovereign base areas (Akrotiri and Dhekalia). The former isn't internationally recognized and I wasn't sure whether to count the latter or not but it seemed most sensible to put it as a bonus rather than omit it completely.

	davidr:	Feb 11th, 2009 at 08:49 GMT		12 points
	@johnlk: There is no formal definition of what constitutes an island nation. Some people, like you, think that it is a country that has no territory on a continental landmass; others think that it is a country with no land borders. I combined the two definitions because there would have been no end of bickering if I'd used `no land borders' and included Australia as an island nation, given that I didn't include Australia in the Largest Islands quiz.

	davidr:	Feb 11th, 2009 at 08:57 GMT		20 points
	@Monoclinic: The border between the UK and the Republic of Ireland is internationally agreed and recognized by most countries in the world. It is supported by about two thirds of the population of Northern Ireland and only about a quarter of the people there want union with the Republic. (Of the remainder, 5% want an independent state, 1% wanted something else and 5% expressed no opinion.)

	Mongoose1:	Feb 11th, 2009 at 09:58 GMT		28 points
	Monoclinic, speaking as an Irish person - I would prefer to acknowledge the legitimate border between ourselves and the North and our country's independence, even at the cost of a place on a Sporcle quiz.

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	SPU:	Feb 11th, 2009 at 10:40 GMT		10 points
	No. Guantánamo Bay is still the sovereign territory of Cuba, the US only have it in "perpetual lease". North Cyprus is an unrecognized (except by Turkey), self-declared state. The situation with the UK's Sovereign Base Areas on Cyprus, Akrotiri and Dhekelia, is also different because these are, as the name implies, sovereign territory of the UK, and they are internationally recognized as such. Strictly speaking, therefore, Cyprus has as much right to a bonus answer on this quiz as Papua New Guinea, Brunei, the Dominican Republic, Timor Leste, Ireland and Haiti have.

	shel99:	Feb 11th, 2009 at 11:02 GMT		18 points
	Awesome quiz, davidr. Ignore the bickerers. You're never going to make everyone happy. 31/38 for me, thanks to playing the countries of the world a gazillion times (evidently not quite often enough for a perfect score, though)!

	Vernon Gonsalves:	Feb 11th, 2009 at 11:30 GMT		12 points
	Yeah, I loved this quiz. Was stuck on 37/38 for the longest while and it was Japan I was missing (embarassed!) It's the "taking the countries of the continents quiz multiple times" that got me through this. Start with the Oceania guys, then the Caribbean and then mentally traverse the coasts of Africa, Europe and Asia... simple! lol

	davidr:	Feb 11th, 2009 at 11:36 GMT		1 point
	@S.P.: To be honest, I think the UK sovereign base areas on Cyprus mean it shouldn't be a bonus. When I wrote the quiz, a while ago, I was probably thinking only of North Cyprus: without the SBAs, Cyprus would be a de jure island nation without being a de facto island nation (by the definitions I've used). Anyway, including it as a bonus has provoked some interesting and educational discussion so I don't regret having done it.

	davidr:	Feb 11th, 2009 at 11:38 GMT		4 points
	@Vernon G.: Yeah, I was stuck on Japan for a while and became convinced I'd made a mistake with the ordering of the list. There can't possibly be a country alphabetically between Jamaica and Kiribati, right? :-)

	Distiller:	Feb 11th, 2009 at 11:40 GMT		14 points
	Another great geography quiz. Got 36/38, I had no idea Bahrain was an island.

	davidr:	Feb 11th, 2009 at 11:40 GMT		9 points
	@shell99: Thanks! And thanks to everyone else who's made supportive or intelligently critical comments, even if I've disagreed with them.

	montecarlo:	Feb 11th, 2009 at 12:15 GMT		83 points
	when i was in taiwan teaching english, one of the words we taught one night to the crowd of ~80 was 'island'. we tried to get them to guess the word. so we kept saying things like: "taiwan is an ______." and they would be like, "country!", no. "nation!". no. "province?" (they would say this one with angry faces and ready to form a mob). no. then we'd be like: "taiwan is surrounded by water, so that makes it an ______." and they would be like, ".... nation?" finally we just said guys i guess you dont know the word. "ISLAND!" and then they all looked completely confused and said "no, no, no. taiwan is not an island, it's too big." and then they named some of the tiny islands surrounding taiwan, and said "THOSE are islands. your english is not very good, you should not be teaching us."

	fishmonkey:	Feb 11th, 2009 at 12:38 GMT		11 points
	Yet another great geography quiz Davidr: keep em coming! I think the definition of island nation given is perfectly clear so I didn't waste time with United Kingdom etc.

	davidr:	Feb 11th, 2009 at 12:39 GMT		6 points
	@montecarlo: In that case, I reckon we need to remove Taiwan plus another seven countries that have at least one island bigger than that. grin

	ronnymexico:	Feb 11th, 2009 at 13:46 GMT		9 points
	Good quiz. While I would personally share John's definition of islands nations, which would include those that share borders but have no presence on continental land masses, as well as those that are excluded by relics of British imperialism :), the guideline for the quiz itself is clear at the top so I don't think there's a basis for complaint in that regard.