Barbados Trivia
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44 free Barbados trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Barbados is a small coral island with an outsized story. It is where grapefruit was born, where the world's oldest rum distillery still operates, where George Washington made his only trip abroad, and where the greatest all-rounder in cricket history learned the game. It became independent in 1966 and dropped the monarchy for a republic in 2021, naming Rihanna a National Hero on the same night. This quiz covers the whole island: geography (why is it flatter than its neighbours?), history (the sugar revolution, the 1661 slave code, Bussa's rebellion, independence), symbols (the broken trident on the flag, the pegged dollar), culture and food (Crop Over, cou-cou and flying fish, Bajan Creole, the Landship) and sport (Sobers, Worrell, Marshall, Kensington Oval). Questions start easy and get hard. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and other reference pages before publishing.
30 of 44 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the capital and largest city of Barbados?
Bridgetown
Bridgetown, on Carlisle Bay in the south-west, took down its statue of Lord Nelson in 2020 after more than 200 years, saying it had no place in National Heroes Square.
Q 02Within the Caribbean region, Barbados holds which geographic distinction?
It is the easternmost island
It is the easternmost island of the Caribbean, about 160 km east of Saint Vincent; lying outside the main hurricane zone, Barbados is often spared the storms that hit its neighbours.
Q 03Which royal attended the midnight ceremony in November 2021 at which Barbados became a republic?
Prince Charles
Prince Charles, then Prince of Wales, was guest of honour as the Queen's standard was lowered, and in his speech he acknowledged the 'appalling atrocity of slavery' the island had suffered.
Q 04Which singer was declared a National Hero of Barbados on the night it became a republic?
Rihanna
Rihanna, whose full name is Robyn Rihanna Fenty, was named a National Hero at the ceremony, where the prime minister told her: 'May you continue to shine like a diamond.'
Q 05Who was Barbados's first prime minister, known as the "Father of Independence"?
Errol Barrow
Errol Barrow flew dozens of bombing sorties over Europe as an RAF navigator before entering politics; he later led Barbados out of British rule, and his birthday, 21 January, is a public holiday.
Q 06Who became Barbados's first female prime minister in 2018?
Mia Mottley
Mia Mottley took office in May 2018 after her Barbados Labour Party won all 30 seats, which left the House with no opposition until one of her own MPs quit the party to lead one.
Q 07Who served as the first president of Barbados?
Sandra Mason
Sandra Mason, the island's last governor-general, was jointly nominated by the prime minister and the opposition leader and sworn in as the first president at the republic ceremony.
Q 08The trident on the flag of Barbados is missing its shaft to symbolise what?
The break from colonial rule
The broken trident stands for the break from colonial rule: the colonial badge showed Britannia holding a whole trident, and the new flag kept only its snapped-off head.
Q 09What do the two ultramarine bands on the flag of Barbados represent?
The sea and the sky
The sea and the sky are what the two blue bands stand for, with gold for the sand between them; art teacher Grantley Prescod's design won an open contest that drew over a thousand entries.
Q 10Since 1975 the Barbadian dollar has been pegged at two to one against which currency?
The US dollar
The US dollar: the Barbadian dollar replaced the East Caribbean dollar at par in 1973 and was fixed at two to the US dollar in 1975, so visitors can convert prices by halving them.
Q 11What is the national dish of Barbados?
Cou-cou and flying fish
Cou-cou and flying fish pairs a polenta-like mash of cornmeal and okra with steamed or fried fish; the fish is a national symbol, and Barbados is nicknamed 'the land of the flying fish'.
Q 12Mount Gay, with a deed dating to 1703, claims to be the world's oldest what?
Commercial rum distillery
Commercial rum distillery: Mount Gay rests the claim on a 1703 deed and is named for its manager Sir John Gay Alleyne, using his middle name because a Mount Alleyne already existed on the island.
Q 13Which citrus probably arose in 18th-century Barbados as a sweet orange–pomelo cross?
Grapefruit
Q 21Barbados hosted the 2007 Cricket World Cup final, in which Sri Lanka lost to which team?
Australia
Australia won a third World Cup in a row, but the rain-shortened final ended in farce when the umpires wrongly made the teams finish the last overs in near darkness.
Q 22Which Barbados ground, known locally as the 'Mecca' of cricket, staged its first Test match in 1930?
Kensington Oval
Kensington Oval began its Test history in January 1930 with a draw between West Indies and England, and was rebuilt to stage the 2007 World Cup final.
Q 23Which costumed street parade, held on the first Monday in August, closes Barbados's Crop Over festival?
Grand Kadooment
Grapefruit is a natural hybrid that could arise there because both parents, the sweet orange and the pomelo, were introduced crops already growing in the West Indies by the 1690s.
Q 14Which crop, grown from the 1640s, made Barbados a major plantation economy?
Sugar cane
Sugar cane replaced tobacco and cotton as the island's export crop, and for a time Barbados dominated the Caribbean sugar industry before Jamaica and the Leeward Islands overtook it.
Q 15Barbados's 1661 slave code became the model for the 1696 slave law of which mainland colony?
Carolina
Carolina was settled partly by planters from Barbados, who carried the island's 1661 code into the colony's own slave law of 1696; Jamaica and Antigua adopted versions too.
Q 16The Emancipation Statue in Barbados is popularly named after which leader of an 1816 slave rebellion?
Bussa
Bussa, an African-born enslaved man, led the 1816 rising, the first of three mass revolts in the British West Indies that shook public faith in slavery in the years before abolition.
Q 17Which future US president made his only trip outside what is now the United States to Barbados in 1751?
George Washington
George Washington, then 19, sailed with his tubercular half-brother Lawrence and caught smallpox on the island, which scarred his face slightly but left him immune to later infection.
Q 18Which Barbadian cricketer scored a then-record 365 not out in 1958 and is called the greatest all-rounder ever?
Garfield Sobers
Garfield Sobers had never made a Test century before he turned his first into 365 not out against Pakistan, a world record that stood until 1994; he was knighted in 1975.
Q 19Which Barbadian was the first black cricketer appointed West Indies captain for a full series?
Frank Worrell
Frank Worrell led West Indies throughout the 1960–61 tour of Australia, the first black captain for a full series; the Australia–West Indies trophy bears his name.
Q 20Which Barbadian fast bowler retired in 1991 as West Indies' leading Test wicket-taker, with 376?
Malcolm Marshall
Malcolm Marshall held the West Indies record until 1998; at Headingley in 1984 he broke his thumb in two places, batted one-handed and then took 7 for 53.
Grand Kadooment is the finale of a festival that began as a plantation celebration of the end of the harvest, died out in the 1940s and was revived in 1974.
Q 24What name is given to Barbados's small wooden houses, set on blocks so their owners could move them?
Chattel houses
Chattel houses take their name from a word for movable property: the plantation workers who owned them rarely owned the land beneath, so a house had to be able to move with its owner.
Q 25Barbadians colloquially call themselves what?
Bajans
Bajans is a clipped form of 'Bar-bajans', a spelling of 'Barbadians' the way the word sounds when spoken; islanders also nickname their country 'Bim'.
Q 26Barbados is the only home of the world's smallest known species of which animal, identified in 2008?
Snake
Snake: the Barbados threadsnake, about 10 cm long and as thin as spaghetti, is thought to be close to the smallest a snake can be, since its single hatchling must still be big enough to find food.
Q 27Barbados's name most likely comes from a Portuguese or Spanish word meaning what?
The bearded ones
'Barbados' means 'the bearded ones' in Portuguese and Spanish, possibly after the bearded fig tree's hanging aerial roots or the supposedly bearded Kalinago people.
Q 28Barbados is much flatter than its neighbours because it is geologically made of what?
Coral limestone
A cap of coral limestone up to about 90 m thick covers most of Barbados, raised above the sea as sediment scraped off the South American plate piled up beneath it.
Q 29Which small primate, brought from West Africa on slave ships, now roams wild across Barbados?
Green monkey
The green monkey reached the island from West Africa aboard slave ships in the late 1600s; kidney cells from an African green monkey later gave science the Vero cell line used to make polio vaccine.
Q 30Which underground attraction in central Barbados, opened to tourists in 1981, is toured by tram?
Harrison's Cave
Harrison's Cave was first recorded in 1795, then lay largely forgotten until it was rediscovered in the early 1970s; the government developed it and opened the tram tour in 1981.