I asked people what they call the game depicted by the image below. It’s a game that most people have played, but there are a few variations on the name - mostly related to ordering of the words.
Before you read this post, you should answer the question yourself.
Motivation
Growing up, I lived in Broome, which is a small town in remote Western Australia. In Broome the game was called “rock, paper, scissors”. That’s what all the kids at school called it, and that’s what I called it.
When I was about eight years old we moved from Broome to Darwin, in the Northern Territory. I distinctly remember the game taking on a different name. It was now “scissors, paper, rock”.
When playing the game you would say “scissors, paper, rock”, stressing each syllable in a sing-songy way. Your fist would move up and then down in sync with the syllables, and you would make your chosen shape on the final down motion as you say “rock”.
I’ve asked my colleagues at work what they call the game, and results are mixed. We have people from all over Australia (and the world), so I started to wonder if there were regional differences. I made this survey to find out.
Results
As at 25 January 2025, the survey has 126 usable responses. I will endeavour to update this summary as more responses come in. Most of the survey responses are from the r/SampleSize subreddit.
Unsurprisingly, nearly everyone who responded uses some permutation of “rock, paper, scissors”, whether that be in in English or not.
There are occasional substitutions of words with similar meanings. For example, “stone” instead of “rock” appears to be common in Asia, and “bag” instead of “paper” pops up in Sweden.
There are lots of other names for the game too. For example, “ro sham bo” is used by some people in the United States (I also recall this being the name used on MythBusters). In Hawaii, some call the game “janken”, which is derived from a Japanese name for the game. In France, some call the game “chifoumi”, which is also derived from Japanese. In South Africa some call the game “ching chong cha”.
The next few sections summarise the results by broad geographical region. In cases where the response was in a language other than English, if the name was able to be translated to some variation on “rock, paper, scissors”, then the translation was used.
Australia and New Zealand
I start with Australia and New Zealand because it’s where I’m from, and, despite the small sample size (n=7), the results are interesting. Australia and New Zealand have the most variance in the name for the game, with roughly equal use of three different permutations of “rock, paper, scissors”.
| Name | Count |
|---|---|
| rock, paper, scissors | 2 |
| paper, scissors, rock | 2 |
| scissors, paper, rock | 3 |
The sample is too small to draw out any further geographical insights. But, for interest: the two “rock, paper, scissors” responses were from Western Australia and New Zealand, the two “paper, scissors, rock” responses were from Western Australia and Victoria, and two of the three “scissors, paper, rock” responses were from New South Wales while the other was from Queensland.
North America
North America has the greatest number of responses, and is by far the most uniform. Nearly everyone who responded to the survey called the game “rock, paper, scissors”.
| Name | Count |
|---|---|
| rock, paper, scissors | 68 |
| paper, rock, scissors | 1 |
| janken | 1 |
Europe
Europe has a greater mix of responses than North America, however nearly all of the variety came from the mainland. Everyone in the UK responded “rock, paper, scissors”, except one response from Scotland which used “stone” instead of “rock”. It’s interesting that the UK responses are so uniform, noting the diverse range of dialects that exist across the country.
| Name | Count |
|---|---|
| rock, paper, scissors | 30 |
| stone, paper, scissors | 1 |
| rock, scissors, paper | 2 |
| rock, scissors, bag | 2 |
| stone, scissors, paper | 1 |
| paper, scissors, stone | 1 |
| scissors, paper, rock | 1 |
| scissors, rock, paper | 1 |
| marynarzyk | 1 |
Asia
All but one of the responses from Asia uses the “rock/stone, paper, scissors” ordering. Interestingly, three of the seven responses use “stone” in place of “rock”.
| Name | Count |
|---|---|
| rock, paper, scissors | 4 |
| stone, paper, scissors | 2 |
| scissors, paper, stone | 1 |
Conclusion
Across the Anglosphere, just about everyone who responded calls the game “rock, paper, scissors”. An emerging exception (more data needed) is Australia, where there appears to be a number of variations on these three words, which supports my initial motivation for doing this survey.
Across the rest of the world we see a greater variety of names for the game, which mostly come in the form of permutations or like-for-like word substitutions of “rock, paper, scissors”.