Jamaica
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98 free Jamaica trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
45 free Jamaica trivia questions with answers. Jamaica is the third-largest island in the Caribbean and punches far above its size: it gave the world reggae, ska and dancehall, the fastest sprinter ever recorded, a religion, a bobsled team that became a Disney film and the house where every James Bond novel was written. This quiz covers the whole island: the Taíno name and Columbus's landing, the Spanish and English centuries, Port Royal's earthquake, the Maroons and Nanny, emancipation and independence in 1962, the flag and motto, the fourteen parishes, Kingston's harbour and Montego Bay's airport, Blue Mountain Peak and Blue Mountain coffee, ackee and saltfish, jerk, Red Stripe, Bob Marley and the Wailers, Rastafari and Haile Selassie, Usain Bolt and the Olympic sprint dynasty, cricket, the Reggae Boyz, the 1988 bobsled team and Ian Fleming's Goldeneye. Easy openers for holidaymakers, hard ones for people who know their parishes. Use it for a Caribbean-themed quiz round, a classroom geography lesson or the flight down. Every answer was checked against a documented source and the citation sits under each explanation.
30 of 98 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which two Caribbean islands are larger than Jamaica?
Cuba and Hispaniola
Cuba and Hispaniola are both bigger, but Jamaica sits on the main shipping lanes to the Panama Canal, which brings heavy container traffic to Kingston's port.
Q 02Jamaica's Taino name, Xaymaca, is often translated as what?
Land of wood and water
Land of wood and water is one reading of Xaymaca, with 'land of springs' another; the Taino who named the island died from disease and forced labour under Spain.
Q 03While stranded on Jamaica in 1504, Christopher Columbus won over the Taino by predicting what?
A lunar eclipse
A lunar eclipse: Columbus foretold it from an almanac's tables, and the darkened moon won back the goodwill of the Taino his stranded crew depended on.
Q 04What did Christopher Columbus name Jamaica when he reached it on his second voyage?
Santiago
Santiago: Columbus later returned on his fourth voyage and was stranded on the island for a year after beaching his damaged ships.
Q 05Which two commanders led the English invasion of Jamaica in 1655?
William Penn and Robert Venables
William Penn and Robert Venables took Jamaica in May 1655, and the Spanish settlers freed their slaves as they fled the island.
Q 06Which privateer, later Jamaica's lieutenant governor, made Port Royal his base?
Henry Morgan
Henry Morgan raided Spanish colonies and ships from Port Royal, yet King Charles II knighted him and sent him back to help govern Jamaica.
Q 07The free communities of escaped slaves who held out in Jamaica's mountainous interior were known as what?
Maroons
Maroons won land and freedom in treaties of 1739 and 1740, but in return they agreed to help recapture runaway slaves.
Q 08Which ship's 1948 arrival in Britain, carrying hundreds of Jamaicans, gave its name to a generation of Caribbean migrants?
Empire Windrush
Empire Windrush: in 2018 the Windrush scandal revealed that some of that generation had been denied healthcare, work or housing and threatened with deportation.
Q 09Which system kept most of Jamaica's freed slaves working for former owners until 1838?
Apprenticeship
Apprenticeship lasted until full freedom in 1838; slave revolts such as Sam Sharpe's 1831 Christmas Rebellion had helped push Britain to abolish slavery.
Q 10The 1865 Morant Bay rebellion was led by which Baptist deacon, now a National Hero?
Paul Bogle
Paul Bogle, a Baptist deacon from Stony Gut, led the 1865 Morant Bay march; Governor Edward Eyre's brutal reprisals hanged him and got Eyre recalled.
Q 11In a 1961 referendum, Jamaicans voted to leave which political union?
West Indies Federation
The West Indies Federation, formed in 1958, lost Jamaica in that vote and was dissolved soon afterwards.
Q 12Who became Jamaica's first prime minister, at the age of 78?
Alexander Bustamante
Alexander Bustamante was detained by the colonial government in 1940, then founded the Jamaica Labour Party in 1943 and led it to independence.
Q 13Jamaica's national motto is what?
Out of Many, One People
'Out of Many, One People', adopted at independence in 1962, nods to the island's African, European, Indian, Chinese and Lebanese roots.
Q 21Jamaican jerk seasoning's two key ingredients are Scotch bonnet peppers and which other flavouring?
Allspice
Allspice, called pimento in Jamaica, got its English name because its berry seemed to combine the flavours of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves.
Q 22Red Stripe lager is brewed by which Jamaican company?
Desnoes & Geddes
Desnoes & Geddes began in 1918 when two shopkeepers combined their shops, selling soft drinks and imported liquor before they opened a brewery.
Q 23Jamaica's mining industry is built mainly on which mineral?
Bauxite
Bauxite, the ore refined into aluminium, helped fuel the economic boom Jamaica enjoyed in the years after independence.
Q 14The black on Jamaica's flag now stands for the people's strength and creativity, but what did it first represent?
Hardships
Hardships: before the flag took its diagonal cross, Jamaica dropped a first design of stripes because it looked too much like Tanganyika's flag.
Q 15Jamaica's Blue Mountains, topped by the island's highest peak, give their name to which prized crop?
Coffee
Coffee: in 2018 Japan's government declared 9 January Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee Day, marking the date of a big 1967 coffee shipment to Japan.
Q 16Which sand spit shelters Kingston Harbour and carries the road to the airport?
The Palisadoes
The Palisadoes ends at Port Royal, the old buccaneer town whose streets partly sank into the harbour in the 1692 earthquake.
Q 17Which former colonial seat was Jamaica's capital before Kingston took over in 1872?
Spanish Town
Spanish Town lost the role to Kingston, a town laid out for survivors of the 1692 earthquake that wrecked Port Royal.
Q 18The main airport for tourists visiting Jamaica's north coast serves which city?
Montego Bay
Montego Bay: after Hurricane Melissa hit in October 2025, its airport at first reopened only for relief flights.
Q 19Jamaica's national symbol, the red-billed streamertail hummingbird, is known locally by what nickname?
Doctor bird
Doctor bird: the whirring sound adult males make in flight comes from a wing feather that bends with each downstroke.
Q 20Jamaica's national dish pairs salted codfish with which fruit?
Ackee
Ackee and saltfish is the national dish; the ackee's Latin name, Blighia sapida, honours Captain Bligh, who took it to England in 1793, and unripe fruit is poisonous.
Q 24The English-based creole spoken by most Jamaicans is called what?
Patois
Patois got its own New Testament from the Bible Society in 2012, though some Jamaicans argued that learning English should come first.
Q 25Rastafari, which emerged in Jamaica in the 1930s, reveres which Ethiopian emperor?
Haile Selassie
Haile Selassie held the title Ras Tafari before his 1930 coronation, and the movement that grew in Jamaica after it took its name from that title.
Q 26How did Jamaica honour Marcus Garvey, founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association?
First person named a National Hero
First person named a National Hero: jailed and deported from the US in 1927, Garvey was reburied in Kingston's National Heroes Park in 1964.
Q 27The 1968 single 'Do the Reggay', the first hit to use the word reggae, was by which group?
Toots and the Maytals
Toots and the Maytals were led by Toots Hibbert, whose jail term for ganja possession inspired their hit '54-46 That's My Number'.
Q 28Bob Marley was born in 1945 in which Saint Ann Parish village, where he is also buried?
Nine Mile
Nine Mile: Marley moved to Kingston as a boy and found fame there, but he was brought home to Nine Mile to be buried in a mausoleum.
Q 29Which Bob Marley album did Time magazine name the best album of the 20th century?
Exodus
Exodus was recorded in London after Marley survived a 1976 shooting at home in Jamaica, and it stayed on the UK album chart for 56 straight weeks.
Q 30Bob Marley's first hit outside Jamaica, in 1975, was a live version of which song?
No Woman, No Cry
No Woman, No Cry was credited to Marley's friend Vincent Ford, and the royalties helped keep Ford's Trench Town soup kitchen running.