Its population – today about 700 people[2] – speak the Mota language, which Christian missionaries of the Anglican Church used as a lingua franca in parts of Melanesia.

[4] The form is possibly cognate with Proto-Polynesian *motu "island", from Proto-Oceanic *motus "broken off, detached".

[5] Mota is formed by an extinct, basaltic volcano, which reaches an altitude of 411 m above sea level in Mount Tawe.

The island is surrounded by a fringing reef, and its steep coast makes it difficult to land on from boats.

For the better part of a century from 1849, most teaching in classrooms and schools of all kinds, and most prayers and hymns from Isabel in the Solomons all the way through Pentecost in Vanuatu were done in the language of this small island.

Mota is generally held to be the first Melanesian island to have become Christian, though missionary work began a year later than on Aneityum.