Asian Flags Quiz: Name the Flags of Asia

How to play the Asian flags quiz

Every round uses 49 flags of Asia. Choose how to answer:

• Name the flag. One flag, four country names. Look-alikes and neighbors are the wrong answers.
• Type the country. No choices. "Burma" works for Myanmar, "Turkey" for Türkiye and "UAE" for the United Arab Emirates.
• Pick the flag. A country name and four flags.

Then choose a mode. Learn shows every Asian flag on a wall, with names on or off. Practice is untimed and brings misses back. Quiz is timed with three tries per flag. Challenge lasts 60 seconds, and every five in a row multiplies your points.

Asia's flag families

Asia's 49 flags are very different from one another, but a few families help.

Pan-Arab colors. Red, white, black and green, from the flag of the Arab Revolt of 1916, appear on the flags of Jordan, Kuwait, Palestine, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq, and on Syria's new flag. Yemen uses red, white and black stripes.

The crescent, often with stars. A symbol associated with Islam and with the Ottoman Empire appears on the flags of Türkiye, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Malaysia and Singapore; the Maldives has a crescent alone.

The sun and moon. Japan's red disc is the rising sun. Bangladesh's red disc on green is the sun rising over the land. Palau's yellow disc on blue is the full moon. Kazakhstan's flag shows a golden sun and a steppe eagle; Kyrgyzstan's shows a red sun with 40 rays for 40 tribes; Nepal's shows both a sun and a moon.

Stars. China's five gold stars on red, Vietnam's single gold star on red, North Korea's red star in a white circle, and Myanmar's large white star on yellow, green and red stripes.

Unique emblems. South Korea's taegeuk, the red and blue circle with four black trigrams; Bhutan's white dragon; Sri Lanka's golden lion with a sword; Cambodia's Angkor Wat; Lebanon's cedar tree; Cyprus's map of the island; India's blue Ashoka Chakra wheel; and Saudi Arabia's green flag with the Islamic declaration of faith and a sword.

Look-alike Asian flags

Flags and history in Asia

Asia's flags carry long histories. South Korea's taegeuk comes from the yin and yang of East Asian philosophy, and its trigrams stand for heaven, earth, water and fire. India's Ashoka Chakra is a 24-spoked wheel from a pillar built by the emperor Ashoka more than 2,000 years ago. Cambodia is the only country with a building on its flag, the temple of Angkor Wat. Mongolia's flag carries the Soyombo, a column of symbols including fire, the sun and the moon. Learning one story per flag is the easiest way to remember it.

Flags of Central Asia

The five Central Asian countries became independent when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, and all five chose flags that celebrate their own histories. Kazakhstan's sky-blue flag has a golden sun, a soaring steppe eagle and a traditional pattern along the hoist. Uzbekistan's has blue, white and green stripes with a crescent and 12 stars. Turkmenistan's green flag carries a vertical red band woven with five carpet patterns, one for each of the country's main tribes. Kyrgyzstan's red flag shows a sun whose center looks down through the crown of a yurt, the felt tent of nomadic herders. Tajikistan's red, white and green stripes have a gold crown and seven stars. These flags are some of the least familiar to children in the United States, so they're a great set for a Practice round.

Tips for learning the flags of Asia

1. Learn by region. Split Asia into the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia, East Asia and Southeast Asia. Each has its own look.
2. Start with the famous five. Japan, China, India, South Korea and Saudi Arabia are easy to recognize and make a confident start.
3. Group the pan-Arab flags. Jordan, Kuwait, Palestine, the UAE, Iraq, Syria and Yemen are much easier side by side than one at a time.
4. Use the map. Find each country on the Asia map quiz right after its flag, or zoom into the Middle East map quiz.
5. Hide the names. In Learn mode, turn Names off and work across the wall, saying each country before you tap.

Asia's flags by number

A few counts make good trivia for a family game night. Of the 49 flags in this quiz, more than a dozen show a crescent, star or both, most in Western, Central and South Asia. At least seven use some arrangement of the pan-Arab colors. Only one, Nepal's, isn't a rectangle. And only one, Bhutan's, is split diagonally into yellow and orange with a dragon running along the line. Ask your child to find examples of each on the Learn wall before you play the quiz; spotting the patterns first makes the scored rounds much easier.

Keep learning

Pair this quiz with the Asia map quiz and the East Asia map quiz, or test yourself on all 197 in the world flags quiz. History programs that travel through ancient Asia, like the ones below, help the flags' symbols make sense.