Umbrellas Trivia
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50 free Umbrellas trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This umbrellas trivia quiz opens up the history of a very ordinary object, from parasols carried over Egyptian gods to storm umbrellas shaped like stealth planes. The easy questions are ones anyone could answer: what the word parasol means, which nanny flies on hers, which Batman villain fights with one, and which singer had a ten-week UK number one named after one. The harder end is for word lovers and history readers: the Latin root of the word, the Akkadian king on the oldest known image, the Greek women who carried parasols as a mark of inferiority, the Paris merchant who sold folding umbrellas in 1710, the Englishman ridiculed for carrying one in London, Samuel Fox's Paragon frame, the Viennese sculpture student who patented a compact folder in 1929, the German brand whose name became the word for it, the Ohio company that patented the working folding umbrella, the papal umbraculum, the Bulgarian dissident killed by a poisoned tip in 1978, and the Dallas bystander who became a conspiracy theory. Cherbourg, Hong Kong, Renoir, cocktail umbrellas and Seattle's Bumbershoot get questions too. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for the object, its makers and its cultural cameos before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our inventions, everyday objects and weather quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01From which Latin word, meaning shadow, does umbrella derive?
Umbra
Umbra is Latin for shade, and shade was the point: the word reached English from Italian around 1600 as the name of a sunshade, and only in rainy England did it come to mean protection against showers.
Q 02What does the word parasol literally shield you from?
The sun
The sun: Italian parasole means 'protection from the sun', and French later borrowed its first half to build parachute, 'protection from a fall'.
Q 03Which French phrase named a 19th-century parasol sturdy enough to double as an umbrella?
En-tout-cas
En-tout-cas means 'in any case': the parasol was built to cope whether the day brought sunshine or a shower.
Q 04Umbrellas were once called gamps in Britain after a character by which author?
Dickens
Dickens gave Mrs Gamp, the tipsy nurse of Martin Chuzzlewit, a big, baggy umbrella she was never seen without, so readers took her name for the thing itself.
Q 05Biologists call the rounded body of which sea creature its umbrella?
Jellyfish
Jellyfish squeeze that umbrella to push themselves through the sea, even though the animal is about 95 per cent water.
Q 06Which Seattle music and arts festival is named after a slang word for umbrella?
Bumbershoot
Bumbershoot is a playful American coinage that splices an altered 'umbrella' onto the '-chute' of parachute; the festival has taken over Seattle Center since 1971.
Q 07Which star danced through a downpour twirling an umbrella in the 1952 musical Singin' in the Rain?
Gene Kelly
Gene Kelly filmed the routine while running a high fever, and it took more than a day to shoot.
Q 08In Harry Potter, which character does secret magic with a pink umbrella after his wand is snapped?
Hagrid
Hagrid was expelled from Hogwarts and banned from magic, and the books hint that the pieces of his broken wand are hidden inside the umbrella.
Q 09In which Studio Ghibli film does a girl lend a forest spirit her father's umbrella at a rainy bus stop?
My Neighbor Totoro
My Neighbor Totoro: the giant spirit turns up with only a leaf on his head against the rain, and is delighted when Satsuki hands him the umbrella.
Q 10The Umbrella Academy comics were written by Gerard Way, the frontman of which rock band?
My Chemical Romance
My Chemical Romance singer Gerard Way created the comic with artist Gabriel Bá, and Netflix later turned it into a series that ran for four seasons.
Q 11Which artist duo opened 3,100 giant umbrellas across valleys in Japan and California in 1991?
Christo and Jeanne-Claude
Christo and Jeanne-Claude chose blue for the Japanese valley and yellow for the Californian one; the show ended in tragedy when the wind tore one loose and killed a visitor.
Q 12An oil-paper umbrella in a traditional Chinese wedding is what colour?
Red
Red, the colour of good fortune at a Chinese wedding: by custom the bride is sheltered under the umbrella as she arrives, to keep evil spirits away.
Q 13The Royal Nine-Tiered Umbrella is part of which country's royal regalia?
Thailand
Thailand lets a king sit beneath the nine tiers only once he is crowned: until the coronation rites are complete, a new king must make do with seven.
Q 21Which sitcom made a yellow umbrella the symbol of a woman whose face stayed hidden for eight seasons?
How I Met Your Mother
How I Met Your Mother has Ted carry the umbrella home from a club after a party his future wife also went to, and seasons pass before she gets it back.
Q 22Which overheating space station was cooled in 1973 when astronauts pushed a parasol out through an airlock?
Skylab
Skylab lost its protective shield during launch and began to bake, so the astronauts fed a folded parasol through a small airlock and opened it over the hull.
Q 23Which Nintendo princess sets out to rescue Mario with a talking parasol named Perry?
Peach
Q 14Which brand's logo, the 'Umbrella Girl', has walked through the rain on American grocery shelves since 1914?
Morton Salt
Morton Salt drew her spilling salt in a downpour to show that its salt still poured in damp weather, the point of the slogan 'When it rains it pours'.
Q 15The papal umbrella replaces the tiara on the Holy See's coat of arms during which period?
While there is no pope
While there is no pope, the umbrella sits above the crossed keys in place of the tiara, a sign that a caretaker cardinal, the camerlengo, is minding the Holy See.
Q 16Paris merchant Jean Marius launched Europe's first folding umbrella in the early 1700s, under which French king?
Louis XIV
Louis XIV was nearing the end of his long reign when Marius's lightweight folding model went on sale, and within a few years it was a fashion accessory in Parisian high society.
Q 17Which US insurance company's logo is a red umbrella, which it bought back from Citigroup in 2007?
Travelers
Travelers lost its own trademark in a merger: when Citigroup spun the insurer off again in 2002 the bank kept the umbrella for itself, and only sold it back five years later.
Q 18Which fictional castaway builds his own umbrella covered with skins?
Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe copies umbrellas he had seen in Brazil, and the novel was so widely read that a big, heavy umbrella became known as a 'robinson' in both English and French.
Q 19Who is credited as the first man to habitually carry an umbrella in London, braving ridicule?
Jonas Hanway
Jonas Hanway, it is said, was hooted and hustled by London's hackney coachmen for carrying one, and outlasted them all; the same man waged a public campaign against tea drinking.
Q 20Before Samuel Fox's steel ribs of the 1850s, umbrella frames were made of wood or which animal material?
Whalebone
Whalebone, the springy baleen from a whale's mouth, left its mark: the French still call an umbrella's ribs 'baleines', whales.
Peach turns the usual rescue around in Super Princess Peach: Bowser has kidnapped Mario and Luigi, and she fights her way to them by hitting enemies with Perry or having him swallow them.
Q 24Why do portrait photographers fire a flash into an umbrella?
To soften and spread the light
To soften and spread the light: bounced off the umbrella's white or silver lining, a small, harsh flash becomes one broad, gentle glow, which is why it is a staple of portrait lighting.
Q 25Which German company's name became a synonym for small folding umbrellas?
Knirps
Knirps is German for a little lad, a name picked for the umbrella's small size; Hans Haupt devised the telescoping design, and Germans now call any pocket umbrella a Knirps.
Q 26Which Ohio company's owner patented the working folding umbrella in 1969?
Totes
Bradford E. Phillips ran the firm in Loveland, Ohio.
Q 27The Senz storm umbrella rides out 100 km/h winds thanks to which unusual feature?
A lopsided, asymmetric canopy
A lopsided, asymmetric canopy lets the wind glide over the umbrella rather than catch underneath it, so it does not flip inside out the way an ordinary one does.
Q 28Which Bulgarian dissident was killed in London in 1978 by a poison pellet thought to have been fired from an umbrella?
Georgi Markov
Georgi Markov felt a sting in his thigh at a bus stop by Waterloo Bridge and turned to see a man picking up an umbrella; he died four days later, and doctors found a tiny metal pellet in his leg.
Q 29Critics of which British prime minister brandished open umbrellas at him?
Neville Chamberlain
Neville Chamberlain was so rarely seen without his black umbrella that, after his deal with Hitler, cartoonists and hecklers turned it into a symbol of appeasement.
Q 30A bystander dubbed the 'Umbrella Man' opened an umbrella on a sunny day as which US president was shot?
John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy's 'Umbrella Man' fed conspiracy theories for years, until Louie Steven Witt came forward in 1978 and told Congress the umbrella was a heckle, not a signal to gunmen.