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50 free Vanuatu trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Vanuatu trivia quiz covers the Y-shaped chain of 83 volcanic islands in the South Pacific: how Queirós, Bougainville and Cook found them, the strange Anglo-French Condominium that ran the New Hebrides for 74 years, the 1980 independence that came with a 'Coconut War', and the wartime American presence that left behind cargo cults, a famous wreck dive and Million Dollar Point. There are questions on the things Vanuatu is famous for — the land divers of Pentecost, the glowing crater of Mount Yasur, kava, laplap, Bislama and the villagers who worshipped Prince Philip — and on the modern country: the vatu, the passport-sales scheme, the plastic ban, Cyclone Pam and its two first-place finishes on the Happy Planet Index. Questions run from easy to expert with the difficulty shown on each one. Every answer has been checked against a primary reference and each question carries its citation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Before independence, what was Vanuatu called?
The New Hebrides
The new name combines vanua ('land') and tu ('to stand'), which the first prime minister glossed as 'a country that has stood alone and will continue to stand alone'.
Q 02Which explorer named the islands in 1774 after an archipelago off Scotland?
James Cook
On the same voyage he named New Caledonia after the Latin name for Scotland; Bougainville had called the group the Great Cyclades six years earlier.
Q 03Which navigator reached Vanuatu in 1606 and named its largest island La Austrialia del Espíritu Santo?
Pedro Fernandes de Queirós
The Portuguese captain, sailing for Spain, thought he had found the great southern continent; his colony of New Jerusalem lasted about a month.
Q 04In which year did Vanuatu become independent?
1980
Independence day was 30 July; the country joined the Commonwealth, the Francophonie and the UN soon after.
Q 05From 1906 the islands were run as a 'condominium', an unusual joint colony of which two powers?
Britain and France
There were two police forces, two legal systems and two currencies; locals nicknamed it the 'Pandemonium'.
Q 06Under the Anglo-French Condominium, what was the official citizenship status of native Ni-Vanuatu?
Officially stateless
They could acquire neither power's nationality, while education and healthcare were left almost entirely to missionaries.
Q 07What was Walter Lini, Vanuatu's first prime minister, by profession?
An Anglican priest
He led the country for its first eleven years, joined the Non-Aligned Movement and opposed French nuclear testing in the Pacific.
Q 08Which country's troops did newly independent Vanuatu call in to end a secessionist revolt on its largest island?
Papua New Guinea
British and French troops had been sent first but the French effectively neutered them; the rebel leader Jimmy Stevens surrendered on 1 September.
Q 09What did rebels who seized Vanuatu's largest island at independence call their republic?
Vemarana
The revolt was bankrolled by an American libertarian group, the Phoenix Foundation; Franceville was a real short-lived independent commune of 1889.
Q 10What is the capital and largest town of Vanuatu?
Port Vila
About 49,000 people, a sixth of the country, live there; a magnitude-7.3 earthquake in December 2024 damaged almost every house on its island.
Q 11Vanuatu's capital sits on which island?
Efate
The island also holds the Teouma cemetery, a 3,000-year-old Lapita burial site with the remains of 94 people.
Q 12What is the largest island in Vanuatu?
Espiritu Santo
It also has the highest peak, Mount Tabwemasana, and the second town, Luganville, which grew out of a huge American wartime base.
Q 13Vanuatu is described as a Y-shaped archipelago of roughly how many islands?
83
About 65 are inhabited; France also claims two of them, Matthew and Hunter, as part of New Caledonia.
Q 14What is Vanuatu's national language, an English-based creole?
Q 21Which monarch watched a land dive during a 1974 royal visit to the islands?
Queen Elizabeth II
The colonial administration talked Anglican villagers into staging an out-of-season jump for the tour.
Q 22In 1995 the land-diving islanders sought royalties from which industry?
Bungee jumping
The commercial version had been popularised by A. J. Hackett in New Zealand in the 1980s.
Q 23Mount Yasur, a volcano that erupts hourly yet can be approached on foot, is on which island?
Tanna
Its glow is thought to be what drew Captain Cook to the island in 1774; it has been erupting almost continuously for centuries.
Bislama
More than 95% of its words come from English, laid over Melanesian grammar; the national anthem 'Yumi, Yumi, Yumi' is written in it.
Q 15The name of Vanuatu's creole language ultimately comes from a French term for what?
Sea cucumber
'Beach-la-Mar' was 19th-century sailors' mangling of bêche de mer, the sea cucumbers traders came to collect.
Q 16In Vanuatu's national creole, the ubiquitous little word 'blong' does the job of which English word?
Of
So the republic is 'Ripablik blong Vanuatu'; the language is spoken as a first language mainly in the two towns.
Q 17Vanuatu has the highest density of languages per head of any nation. About how many indigenous languages are spoken there?
113
That averages only around 2,000 speakers per language; all but three Polynesian outliers belong to the Southern Oceanic group.
Q 18The famous land-diving ritual, in which men leap from tall wooden towers, is performed on which island?
Pentecost
Guinness says the g-force at the bottom of a dive is the greatest experienced by humans anywhere outside the industrialised world.
Q 19What is tied around a land diver's ankles before he jumps from the tower?
Tree vines
The towers stand 20 to 30 metres tall; the vines are chosen to stretch just enough for the diver's head to brush the ground.
Q 20Land diving is traditionally performed to ensure a good harvest of which crop?
Yam
The legend told to David Attenborough in 1959 traces it to a wife who leapt from a tree with vines round her ankles to escape her husband, who jumped after her and died.
Q 24On which date do John Frum cargo cult followers parade, believing he will return then?
15 February
The movement dates from at least the late 1930s and grew after 50,000 American troops arrived in the war; it still has adherents in parliament.
Q 25By mimicking the wartime American presence, what did Vanuatu's cargo cults hope to bring about?
Deliveries of manufactured goods
The GIs' wealth, informality and relative racial equality had badly undermined the colonial powers' authority in just three years.
Q 26Vanuatu's Yaohnanen tribe revered which British royal as a mountain spirit's divine son?
Prince Philip
Legend told of a pale-skinned spirit's son who sailed away to marry a powerful woman; the Duke, having visited with the Queen, fitted the bill.
Q 27Wartime Vanuatu was the setting for which James Michener book, later a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical?
Tales of the South Pacific
At the peak of the deployment some 50,000 Americans were on the islands, more than the entire native population.
Q 28'Million Dollar Point' on Vanuatu's largest island got its name because of what?
US forces dumped their surplus gear into the sea there
When the Americans left in 1945 they sold what they could cheaply and pushed the rest — jeeps, bulldozers, crates of Coke — off the shore; it is now a dive site.
Q 29The SS President Coolidge, now a famous wreck dive, sank in 1942 after striking what?
Mines laid by its own side
The former luxury liner's sailing orders omitted the safe channel; the captain ran her aground so 5,000-plus troops could walk off, and only two men died.
Q 30What is the national dish of Vanuatu?
Laplap
It is a pudding of grated root vegetables baked in banana leaves in an earth oven; very little island food is fried.