Mermaid Trivia
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99 free Mermaid trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
45 free mermaid trivia questions with answers. Half woman, half fish, wholly everywhere. This quiz covers mermaids from every angle: the Greek sirens who started as birds, the fish-tailed goddess of Ashkelon, medieval bestiaries with their combs and mirrors, Melusine, the ningyo of Japan, Mami Wata, the Zennor mermaid, Columbus's disappointing sighting, P. T. Barnum's stitched-together Fiji mermaid, and the modern mermaid of Andersen's fairy tale, the Copenhagen statue, Disney's Ariel, Splash, H2O and the swimmers of Weeki Wachee. Forty-five questions run from easy to obscure. The easy questions ask what animal Columbus probably saw and which sea witch takes Ariel's voice; the hard ones want the year the Copenhagen statue lost its head, the day of the week Melusine grew her tail, the town that offered $1 million for proof of a mermaid and what the Fiji mermaid was actually made of. It suits kids, folklore fans and anyone who has ever argued whether the Starbucks logo is a mermaid or a siren. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on mermaids, sirens and the individual tales, films and places, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
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Q 01The Mermaid Parade, a costumed art parade founded in 1983, is held in which New York seaside neighbourhood?
Coney Island
Coney Island. Each parade crowns a King Neptune and a Queen Mermaid, and it ends with a march to the beach to declare the ocean open for the summer swimming season.
Q 02The Lorelei, a siren said to lure boatmen onto the rocks with her singing, haunts which German river?
Rhine
Rhine. The Lorelei is a real rock near St. Goar whose striking echo may have fed the legend, which is best known from Heinrich Heine's 1824 poem, later set to music.
Q 03What did Christopher Columbus most likely see when he reported three 'sirenas' off Hispaniola in 1493?
Manatees
Manatees. Columbus noted in his journal that the three 'mermaids' were not half as beautiful as they are painted, with rather masculine faces.
Q 04The sirens of early Greek myth were originally depicted as women joined to what kind of creature?
Birds
Birds. The sirens swapped wings and claws for fish tails only in the Middle Ages, which is why French and Spanish still call a mermaid a 'sirène' or 'sirena'.
Q 05In the Odyssey, how does Odysseus manage to hear the sirens' song and survive?
He has himself tied to the mast
He has himself tied to the mast on Circe's advice, while his crew row with wax in their ears. When he signals to be set free, they bind him tighter.
Q 06Jason's Argonauts sailed safely past the sirens because which musician drowned out their song?
Orpheus
Orpheus. Only one Argonaut, Butes, was drawn overboard and swam off towards the sirens, and the goddess Aphrodite snatched him up and carried him away.
Q 07In medieval bestiaries, the mermaid's comb and mirror were held up as symbols of what?
Vanity
Vanity. The props were probably inherited from Venus, the goddess of love, and heraldry still shows mermaids with a mirror in one hand and a comb in the other.
Q 08Which Syrian goddess, called Derceto by the Greeks, was shown with a fish's body at her shrine near Ashkelon?
Atargatis
Atargatis. In the historian Diodorus's telling she threw herself into a lake out of shame and became a fish with a woman's head, while the daughter she abandoned grew up to be Queen Semiramis.
Q 09Which fish-tailed son of Poseidon later lent his name to sea-men in general?
Triton
Triton. Ancient artists multiplied him into whole troops of Tritons escorting the sea gods, and Disney later borrowed the name for Ariel's father, King Triton.
Q 10Mermaids' Lagoon is a favourite haunt of the children in which fictional land?
Neverland
Neverland. The mermaids in Barrie's story are unfriendly to everyone but Peter Pan: Wendy never gets a civil word from one, and after dark their lagoon turns dangerous for mortals.
Q 11The Mermaid of Zennor, who lured a church chorister away to live beneath the waves, is a legend of which English county?
Cornwall
Cornwall. A medieval mermaid carved on a bench end in Zennor's church probably came first: the legend is thought to have grown up around the carving.
Q 12In Jean d'Arras's medieval romance, the fairy Melusine was cursed to take what form from the waist down?
A serpent
A serpent. Her husband swore never to look at her on one day each week; he spied on her in the bath, and when he later denounced her as a serpent in public she flew off for good.
Q 13In modern Greek legend, a mermaid stops ships to ask sailors whether which king still lives?
Alexander
Q 21Which explorer's crew reported a mermaid in the Arctic Ocean on 15 June 1608?
Henry Hudson
Henry Hudson. He logged the sighting without a hint of doubt, naming the two crewmen who saw her and noting a tail like a porpoise's, speckled like a mackerel.
Q 22The Fiji mermaid that P. T. Barnum exhibited in 1842 was made from what?
A monkey's torso sewn to a fish
A monkey's torso sewn to a fish. To sell it, Barnum had an accomplice pose as 'Dr. J. Griffin' of a British Lyceum of Natural History that never existed and vouch for it as real.
Q 23Which Florida attraction has staged live underwater mermaid shows since 1947?
Weeki Wachee Springs
Alexander the Great. The mermaid is said to be his sister Thessalonike: tell her he lives and reigns and she calms the sea, but any other answer brings a storm that sinks the ship.
Q 14Which coffee chain's logo is a crowned, twin-tailed siren?
Starbucks
Starbucks. Named after the first mate in Moby-Dick, the company searched old maritime books for a seafaring emblem and has had the siren on its cups since 1971.
Q 15Which Scottish creatures shapeshift between seal and human by removing their skin?
Selkies
Selkies. In the best-known tale a man hides a selkie woman's sealskin to keep her as his wife, and years later she slips back to the sea the day one of her children finds it.
Q 16What is the Japanese equivalent of the mermaid called?
Ningyo
Ningyo. The name means 'human fish', and unlike the West's seductive mermaids it was feared: one washing ashore was read as an omen of war or calamity.
Q 17In Japanese legend, what did Yao Bikuni gain by eating a mermaid's flesh?
Centuries of life
Centuries of life. She is said to have lived 800 years without ageing, wandering Japan as a nun before at last shutting herself away in a cave.
Q 18Which spirit, honoured across much of Africa, is often portrayed as a mermaid, a snake charmer, or both?
Mami Wata
Mami Wata. Her snake-charmer look came from a poster of a real performer, printed in Hamburg: once copies reached West Africa, the charmer was soon taken up as the spirit's own image.
Q 19Rusalki, the water spirits of Slavic folklore, were traditionally said to be the souls of what?
Drowned young women
Drowned young women, often jilted lovers or unhappy brides. They were thought most dangerous during Rusalka Week in early June, when villagers kept out of the water.
Q 20The Iara, a river mermaid who lures men with song, is from which country's folklore?
Brazil
Brazil. The Iara is thought to have grown out of a far uglier legend, the murderous river monster Ipupiara, gaining her beauty and fish tail from European mermaid tales.
Weeki Wachee Springs. Its creator Newt Perry had trained Navy frogmen, and his trick was an air hose hidden in the scenery, so the mermaids could perform 20 feet down with no tanks.
Q 24A 'mermaid's purse' washed up on a beach is actually the empty egg case of which animals?
Sharks and skates
Sharks and skates. The leathery capsule protects the embryo until it hatches, and the empties that wash up are now logged by beachcombers to show scientists where the fish breed.
Q 25Sedna, a mermaid-like goddess who rules the seals and whales, belongs to the mythology of which people?
Inuit
Inuit. In her story she is thrown from a boat and clings to its side until her fingers are cut away; the pieces become the sea animals she then rules from the ocean floor.
Q 26A sword-and-shield-wielding mermaid, the Syrenka, appears on the coat of arms of which capital city?
Warsaw
Warsaw. The emblem began as a scaly, dragon-like man, and only much later settled into the fish-tailed woman with sword and shield.
Q 27Which Studio Ghibli film, loosely based on The Little Mermaid, follows a goldfish girl who longs to be human?
Ponyo
Ponyo. Hayao Miyazaki swapped the mermaid for a goldfish princess, rescued by a five-year-old boy, whose sorcerer father schemes to drag her back to the sea.
Q 28In Andersen's tale, what may a mermaid do at fifteen?
Rise to the surface
Rise to the surface. The Little Mermaid is the youngest of six sisters born a year apart, so she spends five long years listening to the others' stories before her turn comes.
Q 29What does the sea witch take from the Little Mermaid in exchange for legs in Andersen's original story?
Her tongue
Her tongue. The witch cuts it out as her price, and warns that every step on the new legs will feel like treading on blades sharp enough to draw blood.
Q 30What happens to the Little Mermaid at the end of Andersen's original tale?
She dissolves into sea foam
She dissolves into sea foam after throwing away the knife her sisters bought to save her, but does not simply vanish: she rises as a daughter of the air, a spirit that can earn heaven by good deeds.