Caribbean Map Quiz: Find the Island Countries of the Caribbean

How to play the Caribbean map quiz

The map shows the Caribbean Sea and the islands around it, from the Bahamas in the north to Trinidad and Tobago just off the coast of Venezuela. The mainland, the US territories and the British, Dutch and French territories are gray; the 13 independent countries are white.

• Click the map. The quiz names a country ("Click Grenada") and you click its island. Small islands have a wider invisible tap target.
• Type the name. One country is highlighted; type its name. "St Lucia" and "Saint Lucia" both work, and so does "Trinidad."
• Multiple choice. Pick the highlighted country from four names.
• Drag labels. Drag the 13 names onto the islands, or tap a name and then the island.

Practice has no timer, the Quiz is timed with three tries per country, and Challenge gives you 60 seconds.

The three island groups

The Caribbean islands fall into three groups. Learning them makes the map much less crowded.

The Lesser Antilles are sometimes split again into the Leeward Islands in the north (including Antigua and Saint Kitts) and the Windward Islands farther south (including Dominica, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and Grenada). Barbados sits a little east of the main arc, out in the Atlantic, and Trinidad was once joined to South America.

Caribbean countries and capitals

Ten of the 13 speak English because they were British colonies; most became independent between 1962 (Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago) and 1983 (Saint Kitts and Nevis). Cuba and the Dominican Republic were Spanish colonies, and Haiti was French. Santo Domingo, founded in 1496, is the oldest European city still standing in the Americas.

Countries and territories: why so much gray?

The Caribbean has more territories than any other part of the Americas. They are governed by another country and are not independent:

• United States: Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.
• United Kingdom: the British Virgin Islands, Anguilla, Montserrat, the Cayman Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands.
• Kingdom of the Netherlands: Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten, plus Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba.
• France: Guadeloupe and Martinique, which are overseas regions of France, and Saint Martin and Saint Barthélemy.

The quiz only asks about the 13 independent countries; the territories stay on the map in gray so you can see where they are. Saint Martin is a fun fact for kids: one small island is split between France (Saint Martin) and the Netherlands (Sint Maarten).

People and history, in brief

The first people on the islands arrived thousands of years ago from South America. When Christopher Columbus reached the Bahamas in 1492, the largest groups were the Taíno, in the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas, and the Kalinago, in the Lesser Antilles. The region's name comes from the Caribs, as Europeans called the Kalinago, and some Kalinago people still live in a territory of their own on Dominica.

European powers fought over the islands for centuries and built sugar plantations worked by enslaved Africans. Most people in the Caribbean today are descendants of those Africans, along with people of European, South Asian, Chinese and Indigenous descent; Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana have large communities whose ancestors came from India. Slavery ended at different times: in Haiti through its revolution, which won independence in 1804; in the British colonies in the 1830s; and in Cuba in 1886.

That mix shows up in Caribbean music and food. Jamaica gave the world reggae, Trinidad and Tobago invented the steelpan, and the Dominican Republic is the home of merengue and bachata.

Land and sea

The Caribbean Sea covers about 2.75 million km² (1.06 million sq mi). Most of the Lesser Antilles are volcanic islands, and several volcanoes are still active, including La Soufrière on Saint Vincent, which erupted in 2021, and the Soufrière Hills volcano on Montserrat. Others, such as the Bahamas and Barbados, are flat coral and limestone islands. Hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30, and it shapes how islanders build and plan.

Tips to memorize the Caribbean

1. Start big. Cuba, Hispaniola (Haiti on the west, the Dominican Republic on the east) and Jamaica just south of Cuba take most of the land. Learn those four countries first.
2. Follow the arc. Starting at the top right and going down the Lesser Antilles: Saint Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, then Trinidad and Tobago at the bottom. Barbados is the one out to the east.
3. Pair names that sound alike. Dominica (an island in the Lesser Antilles, capital Roseau) is not the Dominican Republic (on Hispaniola, capital Santo Domingo).
4. Use "Saint" as a clue. Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent are three different countries, from north to south in that order.
5. Zoom and repeat. The Lesser Antilles are small at full size. Zoom in for Practice, then try the full map in Quiz mode.

Keep learning

The Central America map quiz covers the mainland to the west, and the North America map quiz puts the Caribbean together with Canada, the United States, Mexico and Central America. For flags, try the Americas flags quiz. Geography subscription boxes and kids' magazines that feature island cultures, like the ones below, make good companions.