Ancient Polynesians knew Mururoa Atoll by the ancestral name of '''Hiti-Tautau-Mai'''.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://library.puc.edu/pitcairn/pitcairn/encyclopedia4.shtml |title=Pitcairn Island Encyclopedia |publisher=Pitcairn Islands Study Center |access-date=28 November 2022}}</ref> The first recorded European to visit this atoll was Commander [[Philip Carteret]] on HMS ''Swallow'' in 1767, just a few days after he had discovered [[Pitcairn Island]]. Carteret named Mururoa "Bishop of Osnaburgh Island".<ref name="DouglasDouglas1989">{{cite book|last1=Douglas|first1=Ngaire|last2=Douglas|first2=Norman|title=Pacific Islands Year Book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MTpBAAAAMAAJ|access-date=22 July 2012|year=1989|publisher=Pacific Publications|isbn=978-0-207-16114-8}}</ref> In 1792, the British whaler {{ship||Matilda|1790 ship|2}} was wrecked here, and it became known as Matilda's Rocks.<ref name="DouglasDouglas1989"/> [[Frederick William Beechey]] visited it in 1826.<ref name="DouglasDouglas1989"/>
Early European explorers found that the atoll was not continuously inhabited. In 1826 Beechey found it empty. A visit in 1832 found "dwellings but no inhabitants".<ref name=iaea1>{{cite web |url=https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/Pub1028_web.pdf |title=The Radiological Situation at the Atolls of Mururoa and Fangataufa |publisher=IAEA |date=1998 |pages=23–24 |access-date=25 February 2021}}</ref> A visiting ship in 1834 killed all but three of the inhabitants it found there, and it was unclaimed in 1847.<ref name=iaea1/> It was briefly inhabited by copra workers in the late nineteenth century, and again from 1942 to 1943 and 1950–52, but has had no permanent inhabitation since.<ref name=iaea1/>
