Nauru is a country. It is one island in the southwest Pacific Ocean, near the Equator, and it is one of the smallest nations in the world. Only about ten thousand people live there. Books name Yaren as the capital. Though actually Nauru does not have a capital city in the usual way; Yaren is the district where the government sits. You will also read that Nauru is known for phosphate mines. Phosphate is a rock people dig up to help farms grow food. That is true, and for a short time the mines made the island very rich. The less tidy truth is that the digging also tore up much of the land, and the wealth did not last. In Taiwan, students sometimes know this name because Taiwan and Nauru have sometimes treated each other as country-friends, and sometimes not — the island has changed that more than once. The English name came through German Nauru, from the island's own name Naoero. Where that name first came from is not certain. One old German idea was that it meant something like 'I go to the seashore,' but another German who lived there said that was wrong, and people still do not agree.