The Mariana Islands, also simply the Marianas, are a crescent-shaped archipelago comprising the summits of fifteen longitudinally oriented, mostly dormant volcanic mountains in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, between the 12ᵗʰ and 21ˢᵗ parallels north and along the 145ᵗʰ meridian east. They lie south-southeast of Japan, west-southwest of Hawaii, n…The Mariana Islands, also simply the Marianas, are a crescent-shaped archipelago comprising the summits of fifteen longitudinally oriented, mostly dormant volcanic mountains in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, between the 12ᵗʰ and 21ˢᵗ parallels north and along the 145ᵗʰ meridian east. They lie south-southeast of Japan, west-southwest of Hawaii, north of New Guinea, and east of the Philippines, demarcating the Philippine Sea's eastern limit. They are found in the northern part of the western Oceanic sub-region of Micronesia, and are politically divided into two jurisdictions of the United States: the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and, at the southern end of the chain, the territory of Guam. The islands were named after the influential Spanish queen Mariana of Austria following their colonization in the 17ᵗʰ century.
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