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Flags of Nauru

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Flags of Nauru

A single raised-coral island of about eight square miles, Nauru was home for centuries to an Indigenous community organized into twelve distinct tribes — a number still commemorated in the modern flag's star — before German annexation in 1888 drew it into a colonial, then mandate, then trust-territory chain of administration spanning three different foreign powers across eighty years.

Independence in 1968 made Nauru one of the smallest sovereign states on Earth, and for a stretch in the 1970s–80s, thanks to rich phosphate deposits built up over millennia from seabird guano, one of the wealthiest per capita as well — a fortune that has since largely receded along with the phosphate itself.

Scope of this page: the island of Nauru, pre-1888 to present, four entries. No internal partition at any point in Nauru's history, so this page carries no internal-split map. Part of a larger atlas — see the linked pages at the bottom.

Nauru's own coastline, four rulers

Nauru's own real coastline, traced whole — a single 21-square-kilometer island that changed rulers without ever being administratively split. Press play, or drag the slider, to watch who held it, era to era.

This is a single-region page — there has never been more than one government on Nauru at a time. At barely 21 square kilometers, with no neighboring land for hundreds of kilometers, Nauru has no internal region to genuinely split apart.
1968–present
CENTRAL PACIFIC OCEAN NAURU
Republic of Nauru (independent)

Real traced coastline (a small island, shown enlarged), no internal partition — see the rule box above for why.

How we know this. 4 of 4 eras on this page carry an evidence panel (1 attested, 1 placeholder image, 2 not yet checked). Only the ones marked attested are confirmed by the sources named under them; where sources disagree or a claim could not be confirmed, the panel says so.
blue field, gold equator stripe, white 12-pointed star — adopted at independence
1968 – present

Republic of Nauru (independent)

Independent stateHammer DeRoburtSecular (no state religion)
Migration & conquest:Immigration: Australian offshore asylum-seeker centre (2001–)

Who & why: Nauru becomes fully independent of Australian, British, and New Zealand trusteeship on 31 January 1968, still celebrated as Angam Day's companion national holiday and the island's founding date as a sovereign republic. With a land area of about 21 square kilometers and a population that has never much exceeded 10,000–13,000, it ranks among the smallest countries in the world by both measures. Phosphate royalties briefly made it, per capita, one of the wealthiest nations on Earth through the 1970s and into the 1980s, before decades of heavy mining exhausted much of the easily worked reserve and left the interior badly degraded.

What it represents: the narrow gold stripe across the blue field marks the equator, which Nauru sits just south of; the white star, with its twelve points, stands for the island's twelve original tribes, and its position below the stripe and toward the hoist marks Nauru's own location just beneath the line.

Attestedhow we know this

Both sources give 1968, the year this page starts the current flag. Wikipedia's infobox gives the adoption as 31 January 1968; Flags of the World dates it January 1968.

Not established: Only the year the current flag was adopted was compared; the design and the swatch colours were not checked against a specification.

Paint guide
Proportions1:2.
LayoutBlue field, narrow horizontal gold stripe at mid-height, white 12-pointed star below the stripe, offset toward the hoist.
Blue#002B7F
Gold#FFC61E
White#F4EFE1
Blue Ensign of the administering power — Britain, Australia, New Zealand jointly
1920 – 1968

Mandate and trust territory of Nauru

Mandate / trust territoryBilly HughesNo official state religion
Migration & conquest:Occupied by: Imperial Japan (1942–45)Immigration: Chinese & Pacific Islander phosphate laborers
Ruling house:House of Windsor

Who & why: after Germany's defeat in the First World War, the League of Nations assigns Nauru in 1920 as a C-class mandate held jointly by Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, with Australia serving as the de facto administering power on the ground. Japanese forces occupy the island militarily from 1942 to 1945, deporting much of the population to Chuuk and interrupting Australian administration outright, before Australia resumes control at war's end. The mandate is converted into a United Nations trust territory in 1947 under the same three-power arrangement, and phosphate mining, begun under German rule, continues and expands throughout under joint British-Australian-New Zealand commercial interests, until independence in 1968.

What it represents: Wikipedia's flag article gives a Blue Ensign with the Commonwealth Star and Southern Cross for the Australian occupation and mandate (1914-1942) and again for the UN trust territory (1945-1968), and says New Zealand and the UK were co-mandatories whose flags were not used; the white flag with red disc is the Japanese occupation (1942-1945). Flags of the World names no flag for the mandate, records a 1924 proposal by the Chiefs for a distinguishing flag that Australia and London would not recognise, and lists a Customs Flag for 1921-1968. The flag shown here should be read as the Australian administration's ensign, not a joint British, Australian and New Zealand flag.

Not yet checked against sourceshow we know this

Wikipedia (Flag of Nauru): a Blue Ensign with a seven-pointed Commonwealth Star and five Southern Cross stars was used in the Australian occupation (1914-1920) and the League of Nations mandate, and again from 1945 to 1968 under the UN trust territory; New Zealand and the UK were co-mandatories but their flags were not used; a white flag with a red disc for 1942-1945; the history rows cite a Flagmakers PDF. Flags of the World (Nauru historical flags): in 1924 the Chiefs proposed a national flag and the Australian Administrator objected and proposed a 'distinguishing' flag, which Melbourne said (2 June 1925) could not be recognised even as a distinguishing flag; London (27 August 1925) suggested a Nauru badge for use on British-pattern ensigns and the Union Jack for the Administrator; it also lists a Customs Flag for 1921-1968 without detail.

Not established: Flags of the World describes no flag flown by the mandate administration, so the Blue Ensign rests on Wikipedia alone (itself sourced to a commercial PDF); the page's 'Britain, Australia, New Zealand jointly' wording is contradicted by Wikipedia's note that only Australia's flag was used; the Customs Flag page was not read.

Paint guide
Proportions1:2.
LayoutBlue field, Union Jack canton (simplified, without the fly-side stars carried on Australia's own ensign).
Blue#00247D
White#F4EFE1
Red#A4302A
German colonial flag — white field, black-white-red canton with imperial eagle
1888 – 1920

German Nauru

ColonyOtto von BismarckLutheran Christianity (imperial state church, no colonial establishment)
Migration & conquest:Immigration: Chinese phosphate laborers (from 1906)
Ruling house:House of Hohenzollern

Who & why: Germany formally annexes Nauru in 1888, incorporating it into the German protectorate administration covering German New Guinea, drawn in part by the island's rich phosphate deposits, whose commercial value is confirmed and exploited from the early 1900s onward. German rule brings the island's first written contact with a colonial legal and administrative system, alongside missionary activity that introduces Christianity and a Latin orthography for the Nauruan language. German administration ends with the island's occupation by Australian forces in 1914, early in the First World War, though formal German sovereignty is not extinguished until the postwar settlement.

What it represents: Wikipedia gives, for Nauru, a white field with the German tricolour in the canton and a black lion holding a red fleur-de-lys (the German New Guinea Company service flag) for 1888-1899, and the German tricolour with a coat of arms in a white circle (the Imperial Colonial Office flag) for 1899-1914. Flags of the World says Nauru was annexed in 1888 as part of the Marshall Islands Protectorate and names no flag. The sources read do not support the colonial ensign with an eagle, or administration by German New Guinea, described earlier on this page; Wikipedia's German entries end in 1914.

Not yet checked against sourceshow we know this

Wikipedia (German Marshall Islands): Nauru was incorporated into the Marshall Islands protectorate on 16 April 1888; the Jaluit Company began administering the colony in January 1888 and on 31 March 1906 the German government took direct control, placing the Marshall Islands and Nauru within German New Guinea; it does not name the German New Guinea Company. Flags of the World (German colonies): the German New Guinea Company flag (1885-1899) was white with a black-white-red canton and a black lion holding a red fleur-de-lys, the Jaluit Gesellschaft flag was white with a black-white-red striped disc, and Nauru has no flag entry; the imperial colonial flag is not mentioned. Wikipedia (Flag of Nauru) still lists the New Guinea Company flag for 1888-1899 and the Imperial Colonial Office flag for 1899-1914, citing a Flagmakers PDF.

Not established: The sources contradict each other on who administered Nauru (the Jaluit Company, not the German New Guinea Company, per Wikipedia's Marshall Islands article), so the flag listed for Nauru in 1888-1899 is doubtful; no source mentions the eagle ensign on this page's drawing; the 1914-1920 span is Australian occupation.

Paint guide
Proportions2:3.
LayoutWhite field, black-white-red horizontal canton in the fly, black imperial eagle centered on the canton.
White#F4EFE1
Black#1A1A1A
Red#A4302A
NO FLAG DOCUMENTED
placeholder — pre-annexation era, no flag survives
pre-1888

Indigenous Nauruan community

Indigenous nation, pre-contactNo single ruler documentedTraditional Nauruan animist beliefs

Who & why: for centuries before German annexation, Nauru's Indigenous population maintained a distinct island community organized into twelve original tribes or clans, sustained by fishing, coconut and pandanus cultivation, and the island's inland Buada Lagoon. Contact with European ships from the late 18th century onward — the island earned the nickname "Pleasant Island" from early British visitors — brought sporadic trade and, later, firearms that fed a period of internal conflict among the tribes, but no single unifying political authority or outside colonial claim existed over the island before 1888.

What it represents: no flag or comparable territorial emblem is documented for pre-annexation Nauru; heraldic flags were not part of Indigenous Nauruan custom, and the twelve-tribe structure of this era is instead commemorated symbolically, decades later, in the twelve points of the star on the modern national flag. Shown here honestly blank rather than invented.

Placeholder imagehow we know this

This page's own caption calls the image a placeholder: «placeholder — pre-annexation era, no flag survives».

Not established: Whether a flag, banner or standard existed in this period was not checked. The colour shown is not evidence of one.

Paint guide
ProportionsN/A — no attested flag.

Reading the tags

Indigenous nation, pre-contact — twelve tribes, no outside colonial claim
Colony — under a foreign power's direct administration
Mandate / trust territory — administered under League of Nations or UN oversight
Independent state — sovereign under its own government
Leader — the named ruler most associated with the era's start
State religion — the official/established faith, not the population's

Find the records

Family history research for Nauru lives in a different project, Record Atlas, which maps which archive actually holds the paper for a given place and era.

Search Record Atlas for Nauru →

More of the atlas

This page is one lineage in a larger set. See the region-wide hub and the other countries here:

Flags Atlas indexSearch every country and hub Pacific hubFourteen countries, Oceania
Compiled from Wikipedia, Flags of the World (fotw.info / crwflags.com), and Britannica. Colors are close historical approximations for painting reference, not official specifications. Map is schematic and not surveyed.