Counties of Ireland
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50 free Counties of Ireland trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Ireland's counties are far more than lines on a map. They are how people on the island say where they are from, whose jersey they wear on All-Ireland final day, and which nickname they answer to. Some counties are older than the Tudors, a few were renamed after independence, and one was split into new council areas as recently as the 1990s. This quiz works its way around the whole island, on both sides of the border. Expect questions on county towns, famous landmarks, mountains and lakes, sporting traditions, literary connections and the history of how the county system came about. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still leaves you knowing more than before. It suits anyone brushing up for a table quiz, teachers looking for a printable Irish geography round, visitors planning a trip, and anyone with roots in Ireland who wants to see how many counties they can really place.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Cork harbour town, then called Queenstown, was the Titanic's final port of call?
Cobh
Cobh was known as Queenstown from 1849 until 1920, renamed during a visit by Queen Victoria. Of the 123 passengers who boarded the Titanic there, only 44 survived the sinking.
Q 02Which rocky island off Kerry, site of an early monastery, became Luke Skywalker's refuge in Star Wars?
Skellig Michael
Skellig Michael doubled as the planet Ahch-To in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. Monks founded its monastery between the 6th and 8th centuries, and UNESCO listed the island in 1996.
Q 03Which north-coast county contains the Giant's Causeway and its roughly 40,000 basalt columns?
Antrim
Antrim's famous columns came from an ancient volcanic eruption, though legend says the giant Fionn mac Cumhaill built them as a path to fight a Scottish rival.
Q 04Which county on the border with Northern Ireland is the smallest on the island by area?
Louth
Louth is known as the Wee County, and well over half of its people live in just two towns, Dundalk and Drogheda.
Q 05Which county in the Republic of Ireland reaches further north than any part of Northern Ireland?
Donegal
Donegal shares a small border with only one other county in the Republic, so the rest of its land boundary is with Northern Ireland.
Q 06Which county's beaches at Curracloe stood in for Omaha Beach in the film Saving Private Ryan?
Wexford
Wexford also drew John F. Kennedy, who as US president visited his ancestral home at Dunganstown, near New Ross.
Q 07Which nickname is used for Kerry, the county with more All-Ireland football titles than any other?
The Kingdom
The Kingdom goes back at least to 1787, when the MP John Philpot Curran told the Irish House of Commons that Kerry seemed not to be part of the same country.
Q 08Which castle in Cork holds a stone said to give the gift of the gab to those who kiss it?
Blarney
Blarney Castle's stone is built into the battlements, so anyone who wants to kiss it has to lean over backwards on the edge of the parapet.
Q 09Which west-coast county is home to both the Cliffs of Moher and the limestone landscape of the Burren?
Clare
Clare's cliffs appeared as the Cliffs of Insanity in The Princess Bride and as the setting for a sea cave in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
Q 10How many traditional counties make up the island of Ireland, on both sides of the border?
32
32 is the traditional total: 26 counties are in the Republic of Ireland, and the other six make up Northern Ireland.
Q 11Which of Ireland's four provinces is split by the border, with six of its nine counties in Northern Ireland?
Ulster
Ulster's other three counties are in the Republic of Ireland, so using the province's name for Northern Ireland leaves out a third of it.
Q 12Which Munster county shares its name with a five-line comic verse form popularised by Edward Lear?
Limerick
Limerick is generally taken to be the source of the verse's name, although Edward Lear, who made the form famous, never used the word for it himself.
Q 13Which county contains Newgrange, a passage tomb older than both Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids?
Meath
Meath's great tomb was built around 3100 BC and aligned so that the rising sun on the winter solstice shines through a roofbox and floods the inner chamber.
Q 21Which county contains the Mourne Mountains and Slieve Donard, the highest peak in Northern Ireland?
Down
Down is also where Saint Patrick is reputed to be buried, at Down Cathedral in the county town of Downpatrick.
Q 22Which county, the largest in Northern Ireland, takes its name from the Irish for 'land of Eoghan'?
Tyrone
Tyrone was the traditional stronghold of the O'Neills, the strongest of the Gaelic families in the north, whose rule there lasted into the seventeenth century.
Q 23Which county is home to the Curragh, the racecourse that stages all five Irish Classic flat races?
Kildare
Kildare is nicknamed the Thoroughbred County, and also the Shortgrass County after the close-cropped grass of the Curragh commons.
Q 14Which western county contains Croagh Patrick, where Saint Patrick is said to have fasted for forty days?
Mayo
Mayo's holy mountain is climbed by thousands of pilgrims every year on Reek Sunday, the last Sunday in July, a custom that goes back to at least the Middle Ages.
Q 15Which north-western county is nicknamed Yeats Country and holds the grave of W. B. Yeats at Drumcliff?
Sligo
Sligo received the poet's remains in 1948: he had died in France in 1939, and the Irish Naval Service brought him home to be reburied.
Q 16Which county, the largest in Ireland without a coastline, is home to the Rock of Cashel?
Tipperary
Tipperary borders eight other counties, more than any other, and the Rock of Cashel was the seat of the kings of Munster before the Norman invasion.
Q 17Which county, whose hurlers are nicknamed the Cats, has won the most All-Ireland senior hurling titles?
Kilkenny
Kilkenny owes the nickname to the proverbial Kilkenny cats, famed as tenacious fighters, and it is also known as the Marble County.
Q 18Which county just south of Dublin, home to the valley of Glendalough, is called the Garden of Ireland?
Wicklow
Wicklow was the last of the traditional counties to be created, formed as late as 1606 from land that had belonged to its neighbours.
Q 19Which county, home to Ireland's largest Irish-speaking area, contains Connemara and the three Aran Islands?
Galway
Galway's Gaeltacht stretches west from the city through Connemara, and Irish is still the main language spoken on the Aran Islands.
Q 20At which Dublin stadium do county teams play the All-Ireland finals in Gaelic football and hurling?
Croke Park
Croke Park is the headquarters of the Gaelic Athletic Association, which has staged its games there since 1891, and it holds more than 82,000 spectators.
Q 24Which county shares its name with Ireland's oldest city, founded by Vikings in 914 and famed for crystal?
Waterford
Waterford still has Reginald's Tower, the oldest urban civic building in the country and the oldest monument to keep its Viking name.
Q 25Which midland county has Mullingar, the home town of One Direction singer Niall Horan, as its county town?
Westmeath
Westmeath was part of Meath until the reign of Henry VIII, when an act of the Irish Parliament split off the western half as a county of its own.
Q 26Which county contains the Shannon Pot, the pool on Cuilcagh Mountain where Ireland's longest river rises?
Cavan
Cavan is known as the Lakeland County and is reputed to contain 365 lakes, one for every day of the year.
Q 27Which town, home of an August festival that crowns a 'Rose' each year, is the county town of Kerry?
Tralee
Tralee's festival started in 1959 on a budget of £750 and takes its inspiration from a 19th-century ballad about a woman famed for her beauty.
Q 28Which county is said to owe its best-known nickname to its support for the pretender Perkin Warbeck against Henry VII?
Cork
The Rebel County is a name Cork is said to have earned in the 1490s by backing Warbeck's claim to the English throne, and its role in the War of Independence reinforced it.
Q 29Which trophy goes to the county that wins the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship in Gaelic football?
Sam Maguire Cup
The Sam Maguire Cup honours an influential figure in London GAA, and the 1928 original was a faithful model of the Ardagh Chalice, an early Christian treasure.
Q 30Which Kerry mountain, the highest in Ireland, is most often climbed by a route called the Devil's Ladder?
Carrauntoohil
Carrauntoohil's name means Tuathal's sickle, and a five-metre steel cross was put up on its summit in 1976, replacing an earlier wooden one.