The Pacific Islands are a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean. They are further categorized into three major island groups: Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Depending on the context, the term Pacific Islands may refer to one of several different concepts: (1) those countries and islands with common Austronesian origins, (2) the islands once (or currently) colonized, or (3) the geographical region of Oceania.
This list of islands in the Pacific Ocean is organized by archipelago or political boundary. In order to keep this list of moderate size, the more complete lists for countries with large numbers of small or uninhabited islands have been hyperlinked.
Name ambiguity and groupings
The umbrella term Pacific Islands has taken on several meanings. Sometimes it is used to refer only to the islands defined as lying within Oceania. At other times, it is used to refer to the islands of the Pacific Ocean that were previously colonized by the British, French, Spaniards, Portuguese, Dutch, or Japanese, or by the United States. Examples include Borneo, the Pitcairn Islands and Taiwan (also known as Formosa).
A commonly applied biogeographic definition includes islands with oceanic geology that lie within Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia and the eastern Pacific (also known as the southeastern Pacific). These are usually considered to be the "Tropical Pacific Islands". In the 1990s, ecologists Dieter Mueller-Dombois and Frederic Raymond Fosberg broke the Tropical Pacific Islands up into the following subdivisions:
Western Melanesia
The Bismarck Archipelago and other islands directly east of New Guinea
Bougainville and Buka Island
The Solomon Islands
Eastern Melanesia
The Santa Cruz Islands
Vanuatu
New Caledonia
Fiji
Subtropical islands in the Australia/New Zealand region
Lord Howe Island
Norfolk Island
Micronesia
The Bonin Islands and Volcano Islands
Marcus Island
The Northern Marianas
The Southern Marianas
The Caroline Islands
Nauru and Banaba
Wake Island
The Marshall Islands
The Gilbert Islands (Kiribati) Central Polynesia Johnston Atoll The Phoenix Islands The Line Islands Howland Island, Baker Island, Jarvis Island, Malden Island and Starbuck Island Tuvalu, Tokelau and the Northern Cook Islands (Pukapuka, Nassau, Rakahanga, Manihiki, Penrhyn, Suwarrow and Palmerston) Western Polynesia Tonga Samoa Wallis and Futuna Niue Eastern Polynesia The rest of the Cook Islands The Austral Islands The Society Islands The Tuamotu Archipelago and the Pitcairn Islands Easter Island and Salas y Gómez The Marquesas Islands Northern Polynesia The Hawaiian Islands Oceanic islands of the Eastern Pacific The Revillagigedo Islands Cocos Island and Malpelo Island Clipperton Island The Galápagos Islands The Desventuradas Islands The Juan Fernández Islands
