Tuvalu, earlier known as the Ellice Islands, is a Polynesian island nation situated in the Pacific Ocean, arranged in Oceania, about halfway among Hawaii and Australia. It lies east-upper east of the Santa Cruz Islands (having a place with the Solomon Islands), southeast of Nauru, south of Kiribati, west of Tokelau, northwest of Samoa and Wallis and Futuna, and north of Fiji. The primary occupants of Tuvalu were Polynesians. The beginnings of the general population of Tuvalu are tended to in the speculations with respect to relocation into the Pacific that started around 3000 years prior. Amid pre-European-contact times there was visit kayak voyaging between the islands as Polynesian route abilities are perceived to have permitted conscious adventures on twofold structure cruising kayaks or outrigger kayaks. The example of settlement that is accepted to have happened is that the Polynesians spread out from Samoa and Tonga into the Tuvaluan atolls, with Tuvalu giving a venturing stone to promote relocation into the Polynesian anomalies in Melanesia and Micronesia. In 1568, Spanish guide Álvaro de Mendaña was the primary European to cruise through the archipelago, locating the island of Nui amid his campaign looking for Terra Australis. The island of Funafuti was named Ellice's Island in 1819; the name Ellice was connected to every one of the nine islands after crafted by English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay. The Ellice Islands came into Great Britain's range of authority in the late nineteenth century, as the aftereffect of a bargain between Great Britain and Germany identifying with the division of the authoritative reaches in the Pacific Ocean. Every one of the Ellice Islands was pronounced a British Protectorate by Captain Gibson of HMS Curacoa somewhere in the range of 9 and 16 October 1892. The Ellice Islands were directed as a British protectorate by a Resident Commissioner from 1892 to 1916, as a component of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT), and afterward as a component of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands state from 1916 to 1976. A submission was held in December 1974 to decide if the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their very own organization. As an outcome of the submission, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands province stopped to exist on 1 January 1976, and the different British states of Kiribati and Tuvalu appeared. Tuvalu turned out to be completely free inside the Commonwealth on 1 October 1978. On 5 September 2000, Tuvalu turned into the 189th individual from the United Nations.

Funafuti is an atoll and the capital of the island country of Tuvalu. It has a populace of 6,025 individuals, making it the nation's most populated atoll, with 56.6 percent of Tuvalu's populace. It is a thin range of land somewhere in the range of 20 and 400 meters (66 and 1,312 feet) wide, circling an enormous tidal pond (Te Namo) 18 km (11 miles) in length and 14 km (9 miles) wide. The normal profundity in the Funafuti tidal pond is around 20 comprehends (36.5 meters or 120 feet). With a surface of 275 square kilometers (106.2 sq mi), it is by a wide margin the biggest tidal pond in Tuvalu. The land zone of the 33 islets totals to 2.4 square kilometers (0.9 sq mi), short of what one percent of the all out zone of the atoll. Freight boats can enter Funafuti's tidal pond and dock at the port offices on Fongafale. The capital of Tuvalu is once in a while given as Fongafale or Vaiaku, in any case, the whole atoll of Funafuti is authoritatively the capital since it contains a solitary nearby government.