Body Piercing Trivia
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48 free Body Piercing trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This body piercing trivia quiz covers a practice at least 5,300 years old. It starts with the deep history: the pierced ears of the Iceman, the earrings in the royal graves of Ur, the nose ring Rebecca receives in Genesis, the Mayan nobles who bled their tongues with thorns, the lip plates of the Mursi and the sailors who believed an earring would pay for their burial. It then explains why so much of the printed 'history' of piercing is wrong, thanks to one Hollywood businessman's pamphlet of invented legends. The second half is the modern industry: the West Hollywood shop that started it in the 1970s, the punk safety pin, Fakir Musafar and the modern primitives, the 1993 music video that made the navel ring a craze, the Super Bowl halftime show that boosted business, the world records for the most piercings, and the everyday facts of the trade: which metals are safest, why professionals shun piercing guns, what an industrial is, how long a navel takes to heal and what a fistula is. Some piercings are adult subject matter; the questions here stay on the history, culture and craft. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on body piercing and its individual forms, tools and people, and each question links to the page that establishes it. Fifty questions, free, with an explanation after every answer.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which ear piercing passes through the small flap of cartilage in front of the ear canal?
Tragus
Tragus is the anatomical name for that flap, taken from the Greek for 'goat' because the tuft of hair that can grow there looks like a goat's beard.
Q 02Queen Puabi's gold earrings were unearthed in the Royal Cemetery of which Mesopotamian city?
Ur
Ur: Leonard Woolley's team opened Puabi's tomb there in the 1920s and found it intact, with attendants lying in the chamber beside her.
Q 03In Exodus, Aaron makes the golden calf by melting down what?
Ear ornaments
Ear ornaments: Aaron told the Israelites to take the gold rings from the ears of their wives, sons and daughters, then cast the idol while Moses was away on Mount Sinai.
Q 04What is the nose ring worn by many Indian brides called in Hindi?
Nath
Nath is the bridal nose ring, often chained to the hair; it feels ancient, yet historians find no nose ornament in Indian writing before about the 8th century.
Q 05Ayurvedic medicine links the left nostril, where many Indian women wear a stud, to which organs?
The reproductive organs
The reproductive organs: because of that Ayurvedic link, a stud in the left nostril is believed to ease childbirth.
Q 06In Genesis 24, whose servant gives Rebecca a nose ring?
Abraham's
Abraham's servant had been sent to find a wife for Isaac, and gave Rebecca the gold ring after she drew water for his camels at the well.
Q 07Nez Perce, the name French traders gave the Nimíipuu, wrongly credits them with which custom?
Pierced noses
Pierced noses: 'nez percé' is French for pierced nose, but the traders had mistaken wearers of nose pendants for the Nimíipuu, who did not pierce their noses.
Q 08Which Panamanian people are known for wearing gold septum rings?
The Guna
The Guna rose in revolt in 1925 after years of pressure that included a 1921 police drive to strip Guna women of their gold nose rings.
Q 09What is a labret?
A pierced lip adornment
A pierced lip adornment, the labret takes its name from the Latin labrum, 'lip'; many piercers say 'lo-BRAY', wrongly assuming the word is French.
Q 10Women of which people in Ethiopia's Omo valley are known for wearing large clay lip plates?
Mursi
Mursi girls have the lower lip cut at 15 or 16, then decide for themselves how far to stretch it with ever larger plugs before fitting a clay plate.
Q 11Maya nobles pierced their tongues with thorns and did what with the blood?
Burned it on bark for the gods
Burned it on bark for the gods: the rising smoke was believed to carry the offering to them, and a Yaxchilan lintel shows Lady Xoc drawing a spiked rope through her tongue.
Q 12The Chandos portrait, showing a man with a gold hoop earring, is thought to depict which playwright?
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare is the likely sitter, though it has never been proved; a National Portrait Gallery study took the earring and loose shirt-ties, a poets' fashion of the day, as signs in his favour.
Q 13At which Tamil Hindu festival do devotees pierce their cheeks and tongues with skewers?
Q 21Why is the first barbell in a new tongue piercing extra long?
To leave room for swelling
To leave room for swelling, which is normal for the first few days; once it subsides, the long bar should be swapped for a shorter one to protect teeth and gums.
Q 22Which 1993 Aerosmith video, showing a navel piercing, set off a craze among young women?
Cryin'
Cryin' won MTV's Video of the Year, and piercer Elayne Angel credits the demand it set off with turning body piercing into a full-fledged industry.
Q 23Which actress plays the teenager who gets her navel pierced in a 1993 Aerosmith video?
Alicia Silverstone
Thaipusam
Thaipusam marks the god Murugan's victory over a demon with his spear, the vel, and the skewers that devotees wear are named after it.
Q 14Which earring fastening dominated Western fashion in the first half of the 20th century?
The clip-on
The clip-on took over because pierced ears were then thought primitive; piercing only came back around 1960, when teenage girls held ear-piercing parties.
Q 15A Monroe piercing, set above the upper lip, is meant to copy which feature of Marilyn Monroe's face?
Her beauty mark
Her beauty mark is the model, although the real one sat on her cheek rather than her lip; the same stud worn on the right-hand side is called a Madonna.
Q 16Which myth about Roman centurions did Doug Malloy's piercing pamphlet spread?
They hung their capes from nipple rings
They hung their capes from nipple rings, claimed 'Doug Malloy', the pen name of businessman Richard Simonton, and later histories of piercing reprinted his inventions as fact.
Q 17Some people get a daith piercing, through the ear's inner fold, hoping it will ease which condition?
Migraines
Migraines: the idea borrows from acupuncture, but the American Migraine Foundation says the only evidence is anecdotal and any relief is probably a placebo effect.
Q 18The Gauntlet, widely considered America's first body piercing studio, opened its first storefront where in 1978?
West Hollywood
West Hollywood: Jim Ward had run the Gauntlet from his home there since 1975, and the Santa Monica Boulevard shop grew into a chain with branches in three more US cities and Paris.
Q 19Which machine does the Association of Professional Piercers call necessary for sterilising a studio's jewellery and tools?
An autoclave
An autoclave uses steam under pressure to kill germs and their spores, which is why the association rejects dry heat and liquid soaks and asks studios to show regular spore-test results.
Q 20Which 1970s youth movement embraced piercing with safety pins?
Punk
Punk made the safety pin its emblem, though Johnny Rotten insisted the pins began as a practical fix for clothes that were falling apart.
Alicia Silverstone was 16 and was cast after the director saw her in The Crush; two years later she was the star of Clueless.
Q 24Which 2004 television moment reportedly sent a rush of new customers to piercing studios?
Janet Jackson's Super Bowl show
Janet Jackson's Super Bowl show ended with a 'wardrobe malfunction' that bared a sun-shaped nipple shield, and some piercers reported a jump in business afterwards.
Q 25When a piercing is stretched too fast, what is the ring of skin forced out of the hole called?
A blowout
A blowout happens when the lining of the hole is pushed out through the back, which is why piercers advise going up no more than one size at a time.
Q 26The Prince Albert piercing is named after the husband of which British queen?
Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria's consort is not known to have worn one: the tale that he used the ring to tidy the line of tight trousers was invented in a 1970s piercing pamphlet.
Q 27In a 2005 English survey, who most often had piercings beyond the earlobe?
Women under 25
Women under 25 led by far: nearly half of those aged 16 to 24 had one, against one adult in ten overall, and almost a third of that age group's piercings caused complications.
Q 28Who was first certified by Guinness as the most pierced woman, in 2000?
Elaine Davidson
Elaine Davidson, a Brazilian-born former nurse based in Edinburgh, had 462 piercings at that first count and kept adding until a newspaper tallied 6,005 in 2009.
Q 29Which jewellery is most commonly worn in a navel piercing?
A curved barbell
A curved barbell, also sold as a navel curve, follows the shape of the piercing; rings are popular too but are not recommended, because the area moves and swells so much.
Q 30A corset piercing is two rows of rings laced with ribbon, usually worn where on the body?
The back
The back is the usual place, and because surface piercings there are hard to heal for good, most corset piercings are temporary, done for a photo shoot or an event.