Islands: Other

The World's Ten Largest Islands

If specifying where one of these stands in the ranking – especially if asking about Greenland – it's worth saying that Australia is not an island but a continent.

1	An autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark		Greenland
2	Shared between Papua New Guinea and (part of) Indonesia		New Guinea
3	Shared between (parts of) Indonesia and Malaysia, and Brunei		Borneo
4	Gives its name to the independent republic of which it is much the largest island		Madagascar
5	Canada's largest island		Baffin Island
5	The largest island wholly within Indonesia		Sumatra
6	Japan's largest island (61% of area, 81% of population); the world's most populous island		Honshu
8	Europe's largest island; contains 86% of the land area of the United Kingdom		Great Britain
9	Canada's second largest island (very similar in size to Great Britain)		Victoria Island
10	Canada's third largest island		Ellesmere Island

My 1980 edition of the Guinness Book of Answers gives the area of Great Britain as 84,186 square miles and Victoria Island as 81,930 square miles. World Atlas.com gives 88,787 square miles and 85,154 square miles; Wikipedia, on the other hand (citing The Atlas of Canada, on Wayback Machine – the Internet Archive), gives 80,823 and 83,897 – making Victoria Island the world's 8th biggest island and Great Britain the 9th biggest. Needless to say, in this instance I think Wikipedia has got it wrong.

New Guinea is considered to be part of Oceania, so Borneo is Asia's largest island.

Other

Archipelago of almost 300 islands, guarding the entrance to the northern branch of the Baltic Sea – i.e. off the south–western extremity of Finland		Aaland Islands
Island in San Francisco Bay, informally known as 'the Rock'; famous for its federal prison, operational 1933–63		Alcatraz
300+ small volcanic islands extending in a chain from Alaska to the Kamchatka peninsula of Siberia; the westernmost part of the USA – administered by Alaska		Aleutian Islands
King Island and the Furneaux Group (the largest of which are Flinders Island, Cape Barren Island and Clarke Island) are at either end of the		Bass Strait
Forms the North–Eastern extremity of Nova Scotia		Cape Breton Island
Two small islands in the Bering Strait, separated by the International Date Line; one belongs to Russia, the other to the USA		Diomede Islands
In New York Harbour – just north of Liberty Island: used as an immigrant station until 1954; known as the Gateway to the New World		Ellis Island
Largest island in Pearl Harbor		Ford Island
Arctic archipelago – the northernmost part of Russia		Franz Josef Land
Chain of low–lying islands in the North Sea, shared between Germany, Denmark and Holland		Frisians
Divides Niagara Falls into Horseshoe Falls (a.k.a. Canadian Falls) and American Falls		Goat Island
Island in Upper New York Harbour – at the "mouth" of the East River. Its size was greatly increased (from 69 acres to 172) during the 20th century by the deposition of material excavated from the subway		Governors Island
The USA's largest island		Hawai'i
North Sea island, ceded to Germany by Britain in 1890 (in exchange for Zanzibar)		Heligoland
Belcher Islands		Hudson's Bay
Island in the Seine on which the Cathedral of Notre Dame stands		Île de la Cité
The other island in Paris (linked to the Île de la Cité by a bridge of the same name)		Île St–Louis
Name shared by an island in Lake Maggiore and an island off Taormina, on the east coast of Sicily		Isola Bella
Largest of the Florida Keys – at the north–eastern extremity (i.e. nearest the mainland)		Key Largo
Island in the Straits of Florida, at the south–western extremity of the Florida Keys: home to Ernest Hemingway (1931–9) and Tennessee Williams (from 1949, until his death in 1983). Hemingway's house is now a museum; Williams's is privately owned and not open to the public		Key West
Island in the Persian Gulf that handles about 98% of Iran's crude oil exports		Kharg Island
Alaska's largest island, and the USA's second largest (after Hawai'i)		Kodiak Island
Known before 1956 as Bedloe's Island; situated at the northern end of New York Bay, near the mouth of the Hudson River – on the New Jersey side		Liberty Island
The USA's 10th largest island, and its most populous – 7.8 million (2014); includes the New York boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, and two counties not part of New York City: Nassau and Suffolk		Long Island
The largest island that's a single sovereign state in its own right (see above)		Madagascar
Name means either 'island of many hills', 'place of general inebriation', or 'place where timber is procured for bows and arrows', in native languages		Manhattan
Island in Table Bay, off Cape Town, on which Nelson Mandela was imprisoned from 1962–82		Robben Island
Island of Antarctica: formed by four volcanoes, the highest of which are Mount Erebus and Mount Terror, and named by Captain Scott after the Royal Navy Officer who discovered it in 1840		Ross Island
Largest island in the Svalbard group (which was formerly known by this name); largest town Longyearbyen		Spitsbergen
Forms the only one of New York's five boroughs that's to the west of New York Bay. Separated from the mainland (New Jersey) by the Arthur Kill and the Kill Van Kull		Staten Island
Island group in the Arctic Ocean, midway between continental Norway and the North Pole – formerly known as Spitsbergen (which is now just the name of its largest island); total area 61,022 km2 (23,561 sq mi) – about 75% that of Ireland		Svalbard
Separated from mainland South America by the Straits of Magellan; governed partly by Chile and partly by Argentina		Tierra del Fuego
The Greater Antilles, Lesser Antilles and the Lucayan Archipelago are collectively known as the		West Indies
Denmark's largest island; Copenhagen is on		Zealand (Sjaelland)

© Haydn Thompson 2017–22