home
Menu
Create
Random
0
0
0
thumbnail

Geography General Knowledge #11

Can you answer these random geography questions?
Quiz by Quizmaster
Rate:
Featured Quiz
Last updated: June 24, 2023
You have not attempted this quiz yet.
More quiz info >>
First submittedAugust 14, 2015
Times taken76,998
Average score65.0%
Rating4.39
Quiz and answer stats >>
Friends stats >>
4:00
Enter answer here
0
 / 20 guessed
The quiz is paused. You have remaining.
Scoring
You scored / = %
This beats or equals % of test takers also scored 100%
The average score is
Your high score is
Your fastest time is
Keep scrolling down for answers and more stats ...
Question
Answer
What country is also known as Persia?
Iran
What language has the most native speakers?
Chinese (Mandarin)
What's the most populous city on the island of Java?
Jakarta
Which U.S. state has the smallest land area?
Rhode Island
Upon what river would you find the English town of Stratford?
Avon
What island in the Caribbean is divided between France and the Netherlands?
St. Martin
What city was famously built on the Palatine, Capitoline, and five other hills?
Rome
What country was once known as East Pakistan?
Bangladesh
Of all the countries in the world, which one has the most coastline?
Canada
What English spa town was known to the Romans as Aquae Sulis?
Bath
What U.S. military base is located on the island of Cuba?
Guantánamo Bay
What was the former name of the city of Kolkata?
Calcutta
What is the largest landlocked country in Africa?
Chad
What is the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina?
Sarajevo
What country is bordered by Panama and Nicaragua?
Costa Rica
What is a synonym of the word "shire"?
County
What is the largest city on the Yangtze river?
Shanghai
If an American is from the "Bay Area", what bay do they live nearby?
San Francisco Bay
Besides Cape Town and Bloemfontein, what city is a capital of South Africa?
Pretoria
What are Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania collectively known as?
The Baltic States
WelshWizard
+6
Level 82
Apr 26, 2016
Obviously Stratford-Upon-Avon makes the most sense, but technically there is a town called Stratford in East London, which is on the River Lea.
FlickerP
+8
Level 71
Jun 25, 2021
The Stratford in London isn't a town. It is a district of London
francescafawn
+3
Level 43
Apr 26, 2016
How do so few people know what 'shire' means?!
DeusCaritasEst
+24
Level 55
Apr 26, 2016
Not being from the UK + most often hearing the word "shire" associated with Middle Earth = not really sure what it means. I tried city, town, village, hill....forest...township...siredom....I might have gotten it eventually, perhaps.
anto91
+3
Level 65
Jun 23, 2021
Same here, except the LOTR's term for "shire" is "comté" in French, which made it pretty easy to find "county".
dunkinggandalf2
+1
Level 68
Nov 23, 2023
Comté is a delicious hard cheese.
Corrode
+11
Level 60
May 10, 2016
It's not a word that's used outside of the UK and even within the UK it mostly appears now in proper names. You can logic it out, but it isn't immediately obvious.
joeythelemur
+1
Level 84
Jul 14, 2016
I would say the synonym question as written is particularly poor suited for a quiz like this. Consulting a thesaurus, there are at least 4-5 different potential answers, but none of which are apparently acceptable. If there is only going to be one acceptable synonym, then there needs to be a more specific clue.
lucd13
+1
Level 69
Jan 5, 2019
According to https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/shire, there are MANY more than 4-5... Times that by at least ten.
gma1950
+6
Level 34
Jan 29, 2019
In Australia the term shire is used in some states for regional governments but in others the term is council or district council.
Zupity
+1
Level 66
Jun 23, 2021
Yes gma, that's why I tried municipality.
Hollywood
+1
Level 62
Jan 25, 2020
I guessed street, town, county.
jennywren21
+1
Level 61
Jun 25, 2021
Please accept "Baggins" for shire? ;)
phoenexus
+1
Level 48
Aug 30, 2021
some countries don't even have counties, so hard to make a comparison to something that doesn't exist.
Gnomeland24
+1
Level 68
Apr 26, 2016
Can San Fransisco Bay please work?
Gnomeland24
+5
Level 68
Apr 26, 2016
I mean San Fransisco
Carry
+8
Level 63
Jan 16, 2017
SF works without Bay but you do have to spell it correctly.
Antofagasta
+3
Level 65
Dec 22, 2016
Actually got all of these right. Yay.
idontkn1
+2
Level 89
Jun 11, 2018
I read it as "homonym" and tried shier, shyer, sure, cheer, sheer etc. racking my brain trying to figure out if we are using LOTRs movie, Cockney, Yorkshire etc. pronunciation. After wasting two minutes I moved on and got back to the question with about 30 seconds left and finally reread the question.
HTownBoyz
+1
Level 53
Jan 26, 2019
Living in Virginia there is quite a bit of reference to the Bay Area as the Chesapeake instead of San Francisco.
kalbahamut
+5
Level 83
Jan 26, 2019
I'm from Virginia and I've never heard "Bay Area" and not thought of San Francisco.
HinesBrothers
+5
Level 75
Feb 20, 2019
@kalbahamut Where haven't you lived?
dunkinggandalf2
+2
Level 68
Oct 16, 2020
Apparently, he's only spent a few weeks in Narnia.
HinesBrothers
+1
Level 75
Feb 20, 2019
I also live in Virginia and have not heard that term
Quizmaster
+5
Level ∞
Aug 25, 2020
When I was a kid, I thought Bay Area meant Saginaw Bay because that was the closest bay to where I lived.
Jacktheguy
+1
Level 89
Jun 23, 2021
I’m also from Virginia and if I hear Bay Area I also think of San Francisco first.
berlinbride
+1
Level 70
Jun 23, 2021
I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and have lived in Virginia for 29 years. I have never once heard any part of the Commonwealth referred to as the Bay Area. Tidewater, yes. Bay Area, no.
CardinalSin
+2
Level 76
Nov 15, 2019
Please accept Roma - after all that is it's name. Rome is merely a name given it by foreigners.
AlexThirkell
+16
Level 74
Dec 20, 2020
I honestly can't get my head round this all-too-common complaint.

If I go to an Italian-language quiz site and see a question asking for "la capitale del Regno Unito", what kind of a derp would I have to be to demand that the answer should be "London", saying that "only foreigners call it Londra"? I'd also presumably take great offence at "Regno Unito", which is off the chart foreign!

Foreigners often have different names for things, it's a pretty integral part of being foreign.

partdavid
+4
Level 70
Jan 11, 2021
I think it speaks to the need and fun of knowing trivia. I have been thinking about this. Like you, I consider that if a quiz is in English, then the answers should be in English--it shouldn't be surprising that answers in other languages don't count.

At the same time, it's fun to know the "native" or "matching language" names for things--to know München is Munich, and so forth. And as I've been taking these quizzes, it's really not uncommon that these are themselves trivia questions.

Because users of this site love knowing trivia like this, and love showing it off (to themselves or to others), the urge to want to demonstrate it is strong.

The argument doesn't hold up, but I can understand where it comes from.

The other factor is simply people's desire for quizzes to cater to them so they can excel, and lots of speakers of English as a second language know a cognate for the answer based on something other than the English name--so they feel "robbed" when they get it wrong.

jmellor13
+2
Level 67
Jun 23, 2021
I would bet a fair amount of money there is a quiz on this site that is some variation of "give the English names for these famous cities written in their native language." You'd have Roma, Koln, Moscow written in Cyrillic, Warszawa, and so forth. In fact, this very quiz asks for the former name of Kolkata, which is really just the English name for Kolkata from the British Raj days.
camus
+4
Level 78
Jun 23, 2021
It depends. Users can be expected to know that Roma is Rome in English since it is part of a basic knowledge of English. However, that is not the case with all place names. For example there was once a quiz that asked for the town where the piped piper comes from. I knew it was Hameln, but the quiz only accepted Hamelin, the English version. I felt a bit cheated because as one of the very few users who knew the answer I was also expected to know the English name of a town that is only ever mentioned in this little-known fairy tale.

If the place name is little-known I'm in favor of accepting the original name as a type-in. Otherwise it's not just a question of geography but (for non-natives) also a fairly advanced and obscure English test.

evanmems
+1
Level 45
Jun 15, 2021
Along with Pretoria, Johannesburg is another capital of South Africa. I think this should be edited.
jmellor13
+11
Level 67
Jun 23, 2021
It isn't. It's the biggest city and the cultural center, but it is not one of the capitals.
jnsnmnhn
+1
Level 55
Nov 18, 2023
You're both right!

Despite being considered by most (including Jetpunk) as the judicial capital of South Africa, Bloemfontain has had only the second highest court since the 1990s. Johannesburg has the highest court, which in absence of constitutionally defined capitals looks a whole lot like being the judicial capital...

Szatan
+1
Level 60
Jun 23, 2021
Living in UK, I failed UK questions only lol.
Afghabwe
+3
Level 39
Jun 23, 2021
Could you accept SANFRAN[SC]I[SC]+O for San Francisco Bay?
levic
+1
Level 68
Jun 23, 2021
There's too much English knowledge for this one
Save Your Progress
More Quizzes in this Series
Geography General Knowledge

Copyright H Brothers Inc, 2008–2023

Contact Us | Go To Top | View Mobile Site