Easter Island (Spanish: Isla de Pascua, [ˈizla ðe ˈpaskwa]; Rapa Nui: Rapa Nui, [ˈɾapa ˈnu.i]) is an island and special territory of Chile in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle in Oceania. The island is renowned for its nearly 1,000 extant monumental statues, called moai, which were created by the early Rapa Nui people. In 1995, UNESCO named Easter Island a World Heritage Site, with much of the island protected within Rapa Nui National Park. Easter Island is also the only territory in Polynesia where Spanish is an official language.

Experts differ on when the island's Polynesian inhabitants first reached the island. While many researchers^{[clarification needed]} cited evidence that they arrived around the year 800, a 2007 study provided compelling evidence suggesting their arrival was closer to 1200. The inhabitants created a thriving and industrious culture, as evidenced by the island's numerous enormous stone moai and other artifacts. Land clearing for cultivation and the introduction of the Polynesian rat led to gradual deforestation. By the time of European arrival in 1722, the island's population was estimated to be 2,000 to 3,000. European diseases, Peruvian slave raiding expeditions in the 1860s, and emigration to other islands such as Tahiti further depleted the population, reducing it to a low of 111 native inhabitants in 1877.

Chile annexed Easter Island in 1888. In 1966, the Rapa Nui were granted Chilean citizenship. In 2007, the island gained the constitutional status of "special territory" (Spanish: territorio especial). Administratively, it belongs to the Valparaíso Region, constituting a single commune (Isla de Pascua) of the Province of Isla de Pascua. The 2017 Chilean census registered 7,750 people on the island, of which 3,512 (45%) identified as Rapa Nui.

Easter Island is one of the world's most remote inhabited islands. The nearest inhabited land (around 50 residents in 2013) is Pitcairn Island, 2,075 kilometres (1,289 mi) away; the nearest town with a population over 500 is Rikitea, on the island of Mangareva, 2,606 km (1,619 mi) away; the nearest continental point lies in central Chile, 3,512 km (2,182 mi) away.

The name "Easter Island" was given by the island's first recorded European visitor, the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen, who encountered it on Easter Sunday (April 5) in 1722, while searching for "Davis Land". Roggeveen named it Paasch-Eyland (18th-century Dutch for "Easter Island"). The island's official Spanish name, Isla de Pascua, also means "Easter Island".

The current Polynesian name of the island, Rapa Nui ("Big Rapa"), was coined after the slave raids of the early 1860s, and refers to the island's topographic resemblance to the island of Rapa in the Bass Islands of the Austral Islands group. Norwegian ethnographer Thor Heyerdahl argued that Rapa was Easter Island's original name and that the Bass Islands' Rapa (Rapa Iti) was named by refugees from it.

The phrase "Te pito o te henua" has been said to be the island's original name since French ethnologist Alphonse Pinart gave it the romantic translation "The Navel of the World" in his Voyage à l'Île de Pâques, published in 1877. William Churchill (1912) inquired about the phrase and was told that there were three "te pito o te henua", these being the three capes (land's ends) of the island. The phrase appears to have been used in the same sense as the designation "Land's End" at the tip of Cornwall. He was unable to elicit a Polynesian name for the island and concluded that there may not have been one.

According to Barthel (1974), oral tradition has it that the island was first named "Te pito o te kainga a Hau Maka", meaning "The little piece of land of Hau Maka". However, there are two words pronounced pito in Rapa Nui, one meaning "end" and one "navel", and the phrase can thus also mean "The Navel of the World". Another name, "Mata ki te rangi", means "Eyes looking to the sky".