50 free Suriname trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Suriname is the smallest country in South America, the only one where Dutch is the official language, and the one the Dutch kept when they let England have New York. This quiz covers the lot: the English colony of the 1650s, the Treaty of Breda, the sugar plantations and the 300,000 enslaved Africans, the Maroons who fought their way to freedom in the interior, indentured workers from India and Java, independence in 1975, Dési Bouterse's coup and the December murders. Easy questions ask for the capital, the language, the neighbours and the continent's newest oil player; the harder ones want the highest mountain, the meaning of 'Ketikoti', the year the English spelling changed, the reservoir that covers 1% of the country and the swimmer who won an Olympic gold in Seoul. There is also Sranan Tongo, the wooden cathedral, the mosque next door to a synagogue, the flag's yellow star and the Dutch football stars with Surinamese roots. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the country, its capital and its history, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Suriname is the only independent country outside Europe where which language is official?
Dutch
About 60% speak it natively. Suriname joined the Dutch Language Union in 2004, and its dialect has its own dictionary.
Q 02What is the capital and largest city of Suriname?
Paramaribo
Locals call it 'Foto'. Roughly half the country lives there, and its wooden colonial centre has been a UNESCO site since 2002.
Q 03Suriname is the smallest country by area and population on which continent?
South America
About 613,000 people live in an area the size of Tunisia, most of them along the northern coast, making it one of the least densely populated countries anywhere.
Q 04Which two countries border Suriname to the east and west?
French Guiana and Guyana
Brazil lies to the south and the Atlantic to the north. Both the eastern and western borders are partly disputed along the Marowijne and Corantijn rivers.
Q 05Under the 1667 Treaty of Breda, the Dutch kept Suriname and let their rivals keep which settlement?
New Amsterdam
At the time the sugar colony looked like the better bargain. The English renamed their prize after the Duke of York.
Q 06In which year did Suriname become independent from the Netherlands?
1975
Independence Day is 25 November. Nearly a third of the population had already emigrated to the Netherlands, fearing what came next.
Q 07Roughly what share of Suriname is covered by rainforest?
Over 90%
That is the highest forest cover of any nation, and the country has run a carbon-negative economy since 2014.
Q 08What is the English-based creole that serves as Suriname's everyday lingua franca?
Sranan Tongo
Dutch is the prestige language and Sranan the street language, a classic diglossia. Sarnami is the Hindustani of the Indian-descended community.
Q 09Suriname has the highest proportion in the Americas of followers of which religion?
Islam
About 13.9%, mostly of Javanese or Indian descent. Hindus, at a fifth of the population, rank third in the hemisphere after Guyana and Trinidad.
Q 10In the centre of the capital, a synagogue stands directly beside what other building?
A mosque
The two congregations have been known to share a car park when their services coincide, a much-cited emblem of the country's tolerance.
Q 11Suriname's largest ethnic group descends from indentured labourers from which country?
India
Indo-Surinamese, locally 'Hindustanis', are about 27% of the population. Javanese from the Dutch East Indies are another 14%.
Q 12What are the descendants of enslaved Africans who escaped into Suriname's interior called?
Maroons
The Saramaka, Ndyuka, Paramaka, Kwinti, Aluku and Matawai won treaties and sovereign status from the Dutch in the 18th century.
Q 13In which year did the Netherlands abolish slavery in Suriname?
1863
Freed people still had to work the plantations for ten more years for minimal pay. 1 July is celebrated as Ketikoti, 'the chains are cut'.
Q 21What is Suriname's highest mountain?
Julianatop
It rises 1,286 metres and is named after a Dutch queen. Tafelberg, the 'table mountain', is a flat-topped tepui.
Q 22The Brokopondo Reservoir, one of the world's largest, covers roughly what share of Suriname's land?
1%
Its official name honours the engineer Van Blommestein. It was built to power the aluminium industry, flooding Maroon villages.
Q 23Which ore, mined until Alcoa left in 2015, dominated Suriname's 20th-century economy?
Bauxite
The US sent 2,000 troops in 1941 to guard the mines for the Allied war effort. Gold and oil have since taken over.
Q 14During the Civil War, which US president explored resettling freed African Americans in Suriname?
Abraham Lincoln
Talks with the Dutch government went nowhere and the idea was dropped after 1864.
Q 15Which army sergeant led the 1980 coup and later served as elected president from 2010 to 2020?
Dési Bouterse
He was convicted in 2019 for the 1982 December murders and sentenced to 20 years, but died a fugitive in December 2024.
Q 16The 1982 'December murders' of 15 regime critics took place at which landmark in the capital?
Fort Zeelandia
The fort was renamed after the Dutch province that paid for the fleet that took the colony in 1667. It is now a museum.
Q 17In 1990 the army chief dismissed the civilian government in an episode popularly known as what?
The Telephone Coup
He sacked the ministers by phone. The 1980 takeover, by contrast, is remembered as the Sergeants' Coup.
Q 18In which event did Suriname's Anthony Nesty take swimming gold in Seoul in 1988?
100m butterfly
He beat American Matt Biondi by a hundredth of a second, then added bronze in Barcelona. He now coaches the University of Florida.
Q 19Which of these Dutch football greats was born in Suriname or is of Surinamese descent?
Ruud Gullit
So were Frank Rijkaard, Edgar Davids, Clarence Seedorf, Patrick Kluivert and Virgil van Dijk, among many others.
Q 20Suriname's flag has green, white and red bands with what in the centre?
A yellow star
It was chosen in a national competition and first raised on independence day; the star stands for unity and a golden future.
Q 24Which product made up 60-80% of Suriname's export earnings in the early 2020s?
Gold
Almost half of it came from small-scale miners, whose use of mercury has poisoned rivers along the French Guiana border.
Q 25What is the name of Suriname's state oil company?
Staatsolie
Its name simply means 'state oil' in Dutch. Offshore discoveries in the 2020s have raised hopes of a Guyana-style boom.
Q 26What has been Suriname's currency since 2004?
The Surinamese dollar
It replaced the guilder at 1,000 to 1. In everyday speech people call it 'the SRD' and reserve 'dollar' for the US kind.
Q 27In which year did the official English spelling change from 'Surinam' to 'Suriname'?
1978
The old form survives in Surinam Airways and the Surinam toad, a flat frog whose young hatch out of pockets in the mother's back.
Q 28The Surinam toad is famous for an unusual way of raising its young. What is it?
Eggs develop in pockets on the mother's back
Fully formed froglets emerge from the honeycomb of skin after four to five months. The flat, leaf-like frog ambushes prey by suction.
Q 29Before Suriname, the first documented European colony in the Guianas was founded in 1630 by which country?
England
Marshall's Creek on the Suriname River came first, then a colony sent by the governor of Barbados that lasted until the Dutch conquest of 1667.
Q 30Jodensavanne, 50 km south of the capital, was a 17th-century plantation community founded by whom?
Sephardic Jews
Jews once owned over half of the colony's sugar plantations and had their own courts and civil guard until 1825. The synagogue ruins survive.