The country this word belongs to is Papua New Guinea, in the southwest Pacific Ocean, just north of Australia. It holds the eastern half of the big island of New Guinea and many smaller islands. The capital is Port Moresby. In 2014 about 6.4 million people lived there. Papuan itself is not the country’s name — that name is Papua New Guinea — but the word for a person from there, or for things of that country (Papuan art, a Papuan village). English is one of the official languages, but people at home speak a great many local languages. Though actually, on maps you will also see Papua as the western half of the same island, which is part of Indonesia; that is a different country. Scholars also use Papuan for a large group of languages on New Guinea that are not Austronesian, so in a language class the word may mean the languages, not the passport.