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60 free Love trivia questions with answers — pop culture quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
59 free love trivia questions with answers. This is trivia about love itself, built as trivia for couples: a date night round or a couples trivia game. It covers the science (the hormone behind bonding, why opposites do not actually attract, the word psychologists coined for being madly in love), the myths (Cupid's two arrows, how Aphrodite was born, Pyramus and Thisbe, Tristan's potion), and the customs we take for granted: why the ring goes on that finger, why brides wear white, what 'honeymoon' first meant, who is allowed to propose on leap day. There are questions on kisses and their Roman vocabulary, on animals that mate for life (and the swan divorce rate), on the Paris bridge that collapsed under love locks, on Las Vegas chapels and Loveland's valentine post office, and on the romances everyone has seen: Casablanca, Titanic, The Notebook, When Harry Met Sally. About half the questions are easy enough to keep the evening light; the rest give the know-it-all in the couple something to prove. Every answer has been checked against a primary source and shows its citation once you have answered.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Roman mythology, who is the god of desire and love, usually shown as a winged boy with a bow?
Cupid
His Greek counterpart is Eros; the chubby-cherub look only arrived in the Hellenistic period.
Q 02Cupid is usually described as the son of the goddess Venus and which god?
Mars
Love and War as parents made a tidy allegory; Seneca preferred Vulcan, Venus's actual husband.
Q 03Cupid's gold-tipped arrow causes desire; what does the lead-tipped one cause?
Aversion
Ovid tells how Cupid shot Apollo with gold and Daphne with lead, so she fled him and became a laurel tree.
Q 04Which hormone, released during hugging, childbirth and sex, is popularly nicknamed the 'love hormone'?
Oxytocin
It is made in the hypothalamus and released by the pituitary, and it works by positive feedback: release triggers more release.
Q 05Anthropologist Helen Fisher split love into three brain systems: lust, attachment and which other?
Attraction
Her MRI work linked early romantic love to the ventral tegmental area, which pumps out dopamine when you look at your beloved.
Q 06Robert Sternberg's 'triangular theory' says love has three components: intimacy, passion and what?
Commitment
Consummate love, in his model, is the rare case where all three corners are present.
Q 07Does research support the saying 'opposites attract'?
No, people tend to like people like themselves
The one odd exception is the immune system: people seem to prefer partners whose immune genes differ from their own.
Q 08Which word did Dorothy Tennov coin for the obsessive, madly-in-love state when reciprocation is uncertain?
Limerence
She interviewed more than 500 people about love in the 1960s and built the term from the discarded 'amorance'.
Q 09Which ancient Greek word for love describes friendship or affectionate regard between equals?
Philia
Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics treats it as loyalty to friends, family and community, requiring virtue and familiarity.
Q 10In Greek, which word names the natural affection between parents and children?
Storge
It is rarely used in ancient texts and almost always about family, though it can stretch to a favourite sports team.
Q 11The Greek 'xenia' is a form of love or friendship directed at whom?
Guests and strangers
Hospitality was a moral duty under Zeus Xenios; the suitors' failure to welcome Odysseus home helps justify their slaughter.
Q 12The 'honeymoon' originally referred to what?
The first month of marriage
Sixteenth-century writers used it a little sourly: affection, like the full moon, 'is no sooner full than it begins to wane'.
Q 13What Latin name is given to the medieval belief in a vein running from ring finger to heart?
Vena amoris
All veins lead to the heart, as William Harvey showed in the 17th century, but the ring stayed on that finger anyway.
Q 21Which is the world's most famous monument built as a tomb for a beloved wife?
The Taj Mahal
Shah Jahan commissioned it in 1631 for Mumtaz Mahal; more than 20,000 workers built it and he is buried there too.
Q 22Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is set in Verona and which other Italian city?
Mantua
The plot came from an Italian tale by Matteo Bandello, put into English verse by Arthur Brooke in 1562.
Q 23Which Babylonian lovers from Ovid, whispering through a cracked wall, inspired Romeo and Juliet?
Pyramus and Thisbe
Their blood is said to have turned white mulberries red; Shakespeare also spoofed them in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Q 14A Roman bride-to-be got a gold ring for public wear and one of what material for use at home?
Iron
For centuries Romans wore iron rings at home and gold ones out and about.
Q 15Archduke Maximilian of Austria gave the first documented diamond engagement ring in 1477 to whom?
Mary of Burgundy
Before De Beers's 1939 advertising campaign, only about one in ten American engagement rings held a diamond.
Q 16Before the Second World War, roughly what share of American engagement rings contained a diamond?
10%
De Beers's campaign, which also taught the public the '4 Cs', changed that within a generation.
Q 17Whose 1840 wedding is usually credited with making the white wedding dress fashionable?
Queen Victoria
Earlier royal brides favoured heavy brocade, and red was a popular colour across Western Europe.
Q 18Roughly how many people watched Lady Diana Spencer marry Prince Charles in 1981?
750 million
Her ivory taffeta dress had a 26-foot train.
Q 19Complete the bridal rhyme: 'Something old, something new, something borrowed, something...'
Blue
The full Lancashire version adds 'and a sixpence in her shoe'; the earliest recorded form dates from 1871.
Q 20Traditionally, which material is the gift for a first wedding anniversary?
Paper
Wood is the fifth and tin the tenth; gold and silver for 50 and 25 go back to 16th-century Germany.
Q 24In the medieval legend, Tristan and Iseult are struck by forbidden passion after accidentally drinking what?
A love potion
Tristan was escorting the Irish princess to marry his uncle, King Mark of Cornwall, when it happened.
Q 25In the classic Arabic love story, the poet Qays earns the nickname Majnun, meaning what?
Crazy
Nizami's 1188 Persian poem carried the tale into Turkish and Indian literature.
Q 26Cleopatra's affair with Mark Antony produced how many children?
Three
Antony was married to Octavian's sister at the time, which did not help relations with Rome.
Q 27The medieval literary idea of a knight performing deeds for an idealised lady is called what?
Courtly love
It grew up in the courts of Aquitaine and Provence in the late 11th century and fed Dante, Petrarch and Chaucer.
Q 28The Roman poet Ovid wrote a three-book instruction manual on seduction around 2 AD. What was it called?
Ars Amatoria
The Art of Love may have contributed to Augustus exiling him to the Black Sea.
Q 29The Kama Sutra's title translates roughly as what?
Principles of Love
Despite its reputation, most of the text is about courtship, living well and the theory of love, not positions.
Q 30The Romans had a special word, suavium, for what?
A kiss of passion
An osculum was for the hand or cheek and a basium the closed-mouth kiss for family.