50 Fun Facts About Tahiti

Which French painter left Europe for Tahiti in 1891 to paint scenes of island life?

Paul Gauguin sailed for Tahiti on 1 April 1891, promising to return a rich man. He never did, spending his last years in the Marquesas Islands.

HMS Bounty spent five months at Tahiti collecting seedlings of which plant for the Caribbean?

Breadfruit was meant as cheap food for enslaved plantation workers. After the mutiny wrecked the first attempt, a second expedition sailed in 1791 and delivered the trees.

Tahitian Kauli Vaast won gold at Teahupo'o, on his home island, in which 2024 Olympic sport?

Surfing was the only 2024 Olympic sport held outside mainland France, on a wave almost 16,000 km from the host city.

Which star made Tetiaroa atoll his retreat after filming Mutiny on the Bounty on Tahiti?

Marlon Brando first saw Tetiaroa while scouting locations in 1960 and built a small village there in 1970. A resort on the atoll now carries his name.

James Cook sailed to Tahiti in 1769 so that astronomers could watch which planet cross the Sun?

Venus crossed the Sun on 3 June 1769, and timing it from Tahiti was meant to reveal the distance between the Earth and the Sun.

Which English word comes from a Polynesian term that James Cook recorded at Tahiti in 1769?

Tattoo comes from the Polynesian tatau, a mark made on skin. Fifty years later Tahiti's first written law code banned the practice.

Which gem, cultured in French Polynesia's lagoons, is sold worldwide under Tahiti's name?

Black pearls grow inside the black-lip oyster, and the farms are not on Tahiti itself: they sit in the lagoons of the Tuamotu and Gambier archipelagos.

Which port city on Tahiti's northwest coast is the capital of French Polynesia?

Papeete means "water from a basket". A missionary founded the town in 1818, and it grew into the island's capital.

Which rum cocktail, made famous by Trader Vic, takes its name from the Tahitian word for "good"?

Mai Tai comes from the Tahitian maita'i. Victor Bergeron said he invented the drink in 1944 at his restaurant in Oakland, California.

Which captain was set adrift in an open boat when HMS Bounty's crew mutinied after leaving Tahiti?

William Bligh and 18 loyal men were put in a 23-foot launch, and he steered it more than 3,500 nautical miles to safety.

Tahiti is the largest island of which archipelago, given its English name by James Cook?

Society Islands is often said to honour the Royal Society, which sponsored the voyage, but Cook wrote that he chose it because the islands lay close together.

Tahiti's two round halves, Tahiti Nui and Tahiti Iti, are the eroded remains of what?

Extinct volcanoes built both halves between about 0.25 and 1.67 million years ago, over the same hotspot that raised the neighbouring islands.

Tahiti's classic raw-fish dish, poisson cru, mixes citrus-marinated fish with which ingredient?

Coconut milk goes in after the fish has turned opaque in lemon or lime juice. The dish's French name simply means "raw fish".

Va'a, the national sport of Tahiti, is a race between crews paddling which kind of boat?

Outrigger canoes get their balance from a float lashed beside the hull, and Tahitian crews race them between islands across the open sea.

Which island, Tahiti's nearest neighbour, lies a short ferry ride northwest of the capital?

Moorea is close enough to reach by ferry in under an hour, and parts of the 1984 film The Bounty were shot in one of its bays.

The royal name Pōmare, taken by Tahiti's first king, has which meaning?

Night cough is said to honour his daughter, who died of tuberculosis in 1792. Four more monarchs carried the name.

Which naturalist explored Tahiti in November 1835 while sailing round the world on a survey ship?

Charles Darwin arrived aboard HMS Beagle. He praised the scenery and the islanders' sobriety, but was unflattering about Tahiti's queen.

Which American novelist turned his 1842 stay on Tahiti, after a ship's mutiny, into the book Omoo?

Herman Melville reached Tahiti on an Australian whaler in 1842. Omoo, his second book, picks up where his Marquesas tale Typee ends.

Two armoured cruisers from which country bombarded Tahiti's main harbour in September 1914?

Germany's Scharnhorst and Gneisenau came for the port's coal, but the French destroyed the stockpile before the raiders could seize it.

In a 1940 vote, Tahiti's citizens overwhelmingly backed which general against the Vichy government?

Charles de Gaulle's Free France won the unofficial referendum of 24 August 1940, putting Tahiti on the Allied side two months after France's surrender.

Which white flower, also called the Tahitian gardenia, is French Polynesia's national flower?

Tiare buds are steeped for days in refined coconut oil to make monoï, the scented oil Tahitians use to soften skin and hair.

Which spice has a variety named after Tahiti, a hybrid orchid brought there in 1848?

Vanilla from Tahiti has shorter, broader pods than the common kind, and away from Mexico's bees every flower has to be pollinated by hand.

Which animal, fed a vegetarian diet, was served as a feast delicacy in old Tahiti?

Dog was a dish for feasts and high chiefs, and James Cook was among the visitors served it. The native breed later vanished through interbreeding with European dogs.

Which ship, a converted coal carrier, took James Cook to Tahiti on his first Pacific voyage?

HMS Endeavour began life as the Whitby collier Earl of Pembroke. The Navy bought her in 1768, and she lay at Tahiti for three months.

Which currency, pegged to the euro and shared with New Caledonia, is used in the shops of Tahiti?

The CFP franc was created in December 1945 alongside Africa's CFA franc, to shield the colonies from a steep devaluation of the French franc.

In the names Tahiti Nui and Air Tahiti Nui, what does the Tahitian word "nui" mean?

Big is the meaning: Tahiti Nui is the larger, north-western part of the island, and its little south-eastern partner is Tahiti Iti.

In 2020 an airliner flew non-stop from Tahiti to which city, then the longest domestic flight ever?

Paris was 15,715 km and about 16 hours away. Pandemic rules ruled out the usual stop in Los Angeles, and both ends of the trip were French soil.

Tahiti's national team reached the World Cup final in 2015 and 2017 in which sport?

Beach soccer gave Tahiti a first: beating Italy on penalties in 2015 made it the first Pacific nation to reach the final of any FIFA tournament.

Tahiti's footballers won the 2012 OFC Nations Cup to reach which FIFA tournament in Brazil?

Confederations Cup entry went to Tahiti as Oceania's champion, the first other than Australia or New Zealand. Jonathan Tehau headed its goal against Nigeria.

The Bounty mutineers who left Tahiti for good in 1789 burned the ship and hid on which island?

Pitcairn Island was misplaced on naval charts, which kept the settlers hidden until 1808, when only one mutineer was still alive.

Which Tahitian dance, set to drums alone with rapid hip-shaking, is often mistaken for the hula?

ʻŌteʻa was one of the few men's dances on Tahiti before Europeans arrived. Its dancers act out a single theme, such as sailing or warfare, with no singing at all.

Which European power, sailing from Peru, set up a short-lived mission on Tahiti in the 1770s?

Spain's Viceroy of Peru sent the ship Aguila three times. The two priests left ashore begged to be taken home to Lima, and the mission was abandoned in 1775.

Which atoll, with neighbouring Fangataufa, was France's nuclear test site in the Pacific until 1996?

Moruroa's fallout once reached Tahiti itself: after a test in July 1974 the cloud drifted off course and arrived over the island 42 hours later.

The Tahitian ukulele, carved from a single block of wood, is usually strung with what?

Fishing line, usually green, is strung in four doubled courses on the instrument, which is also nicknamed the Tahitian banjo.

What is a pāreu, the brightly printed Tahitian item known in English as a pareo?

A wraparound skirt was the first meaning, for women only; the word now covers any cloth wrapped around the body by men or women.

Tahiti's Faa'a International Airport, short of flat ground, was built mainly on what?

Reclaimed reef land spared Tahiti's sloping farmland: the airport sits on fill laid over the coral just offshore, and it opened in 1960.

Which yearly festival of dance, music and traditional sports is Tahiti's great cultural showcase?

Heiva was the old Tahitian word for the festivals that dominated island music before Europeans came; today's event fills July with contests.

The chiefly title "tavana", adopted in Tahiti in the 1820s, was borrowed from which English word?

Governor turned into tavana when local chiefs took it as a hereditary title, winning back power while the child king Pōmare III was too young to rule.

Which captain of HMS Dolphin made the first recorded European visit to Tahiti, in June 1767?

Samuel Wallis named the island after King George III, and by fixing its longitude he made it easy for later captains to find.

Chinese labourers were brought to Tahiti in the 1860s to work a great plantation growing which crop?

Cotton failed at Atimaono when the business went bankrupt in 1873. Some workers sailed home, but many stayed and merged into island life.

Which name did the French explorer Bougainville give Tahiti in 1768, borrowed from a Greek island?

New Cythera, in French La Nouvelle Cythère, was Bougainville's tribute after a stay of about ten days, during which he also claimed the island for France.

Which peak on Tahiti is the highest point in the whole of French Polynesia?

Mont Orohena rises above 2,200 metres on Tahiti Nui, whose interior is so rugged that it remains almost entirely uninhabited.

Which Polynesian priest and navigator joined James Cook's ship in 1769 and charted islands for him?

Tupaia, a Raiatean priest who had fled to Tahiti, drew a chart of 130 islands and could name 74 of them.

Which Royal Navy ship seized 14 Bounty men on Tahiti in 1791, then was wrecked off Australia?

HMS Pandora held the prisoners in a cramped deck cell they called Pandora's Box, and four of them drowned when the ship went down.

Which British organisation landed Tahiti's first Protestant preachers from the ship Duff in 1797?

London Missionary Society teachers taught Pōmare II to read, and after his conversion the entire island turned Protestant in the 1820s.

Which god of war was the main deity on Tahiti in the 1700s, his cult marked by red feathers?

ʻOro was held to be the son of the creator god Taʻaroa, and his chief temple stood at Taputapuatea on the island of Raiatea.

In which bay did James Cook anchor at Tahiti in 1769 and the first missionaries land in 1797?

Matavai had been named Port Royal two years before Cook by the captain of the Dolphin, who led the first recorded European visit to Tahiti.

What name is given to the open-air stone temples where Tahiti's clans once worshipped?

Marae were cleared courts edged with stones. Each clan's worship centred on its own, and its priests set limits on a chief's spiritual power.

The name of the Tahitian village Teahupo'o loosely translates as which phrase?

Place of skulls recalls a battle once fought in the village; another reading of the name is "to sever the head".

Which French artist's large Oceania cut-outs recalled a trip to Tahiti he had made years earlier?

Henri Matisse made the two Oceania pieces as his first cut-outs on that scale, late in life, after surgery had left him largely bedridden.