Nauru 🇳🇷

Nauru is a country in Oceania with a population of 12,668. Its capital is Yaren. The official currency is AUD, and the main languages are Nauruan, English.

Quick facts

Capital: Yaren
Continent: Oceania
Population: 12,668
Area: 21 km²
Density: 603 people per km²
Currency: AUD
Languages: Nauruan, English
ISO code: NR

Where Nauru sits

Nauru 🇳🇷 is one of 14 countries in Oceania, with its capital at Yaren. It covers 21 square kilometres — 195th in the world — and is home to about 12,668 people, 195th globally.

The countries it shares a continent with include Australia, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, Fiji and Solomon Islands. If you are learning geography region by region — which works far better than alphabetically, because memory for places is spatial — those are the ones to learn alongside it.

How Nauru compares

Raw figures are hard to hold on their own, so it helps to anchor them. In population, Nauru sits closest to Tuvalu and Palau. In land area, its nearest counterparts are Tuvalu and Monaco.

At 603 people per square kilometre it is about 10 times the world average of 59.4. Its population and area ranks match exactly, which is uncommon.

Nauruan is listed as official in Nauru alone. The AUD is shared with 3 other countries, including Australia, Kiribati and Tuvalu.

To see Nauru next to every other country, sort the country rankings by population, area or density; its currency and languages are listed alongside every other country's in world currencies and world languages.

How to remember Nauru

Nauru has no official capital. Quizzes give Yaren, the district where the parliament and government offices are, which makes it the capital in practice. The flag is a little map: the gold line is the equator and the star is Nauru, sitting just south of it.

The flag of Nauru: dark blue, gold and white

🇳🇷 The flag is a dark blue flag with a thin gold horizontal stripe across the middle and a white 12-pointed star below it on the left. Blue stands for the Pacific Ocean. The gold stripe is the equator and the star shows where Nauru lies, just below it. The 12 points stand for the 12 original tribes of Nauru, and the white stands for phosphate, the rock that made the island rich.

Region and neighbours

Nauru is a tiny island country in the Pacific Ocean, in Micronesia, just south of the equator. As an island country it has no land neighbours.

Three facts about Nauru

With an area of only about 21 km², Nauru is the third-smallest country in the world, after Vatican City and Monaco.
Nauru is a phosphate-rock island, and mining the phosphate near the surface once brought it great wealth but left much of the interior bare.
Its nearest neighbour is Banaba, an island of Kiribati, about 300 km to the east.

Sources: Wikipedia: Nauru, Wikipedia: Flag of Nauru, Wikipedia: Yaren, CIA World Factbook.

Quiz yourself on Nauru

Oceania capitals quiz — match Nauru to Yaren
Oceania flags quiz — spot the Nauru flag among its neighbours
Island nations quiz — Nauru is an island country

Quizzes that include Nauru

Three angles are worth covering for any country — where it is, what its flag looks like, and what its capital is. For Nauru those are:

Oceania map quiz — place it on a blank map
Oceania flags quiz — identify its flag among its neighbours
Oceania capitals quiz — match it to Yaren
Nauru capital quiz — five quick questions starting with Nauru
Daily Map Challenge — five countries to find on a blank world map, the same five for everyone each day

Doing all three for one continent before moving on is far more efficient than learning flags globally, then capitals globally, then the map.

Nearby countries

Australia 🇦🇺 — capital Canberra
Fiji 🇫🇯 — capital Suva
Kiribati 🇰🇮 — capital Tarawa
Marshall Islands 🇲🇭 — capital Majuro
Micronesia 🇫🇲 — capital Palikir
New Zealand 🇳🇿 — capital Wellington
Palau 🇵🇼 — capital Ngerulmud
Papua New Guinea 🇵🇬 — capital Port Moresby
Samoa 🇼🇸 — capital Apia
Solomon Islands 🇸🇧 — capital Honiara
Tonga 🇹🇴 — capital Nukuʻalofa
Tuvalu 🇹🇻 — capital Funafuti

Frequently asked questions

What are the colours of the Nauru flag?

The flag of Nauru is a dark blue flag with a thin gold horizontal stripe across the middle and a white 12-pointed star below it on the left. Blue stands for the Pacific Ocean. The gold stripe is the equator and the star shows where Nauru lies, just below it. The 12 points stand for the 12 original tribes of Nauru, and the white stands for phosphate, the rock that made the island rich.

Which countries border Nauru?

None. Nauru is a tiny island country in the Pacific Ocean, in Micronesia, just south of the equator, so it has no land borders with other countries.