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Updates: 

Celvin Ruisdael notified me of sources [4] and [5]. I have used them to fill in some history.

Mauritius went on daylight saving time in 2008-09, but only for that one season.

ISO 3166-2 Newsletter number I-4, was released on 2002-12-10. In "Administrative Subdivisions of Countries", I reported that ISO 3166-2 (at that time in draft form) showed Mauritius divided into five cities, nine districts, and three dependencies. In my opinion, the five cities were not really first-level subdivisions, but were parts of two of the districts. The standard listed Port Louis city and Port Louis district, both with the code MU-PL. I didn't point out the ambiguity of the code, because I wasn't treating Port Louis city as a subdivision. In this newsletter, ISO has apparently recognized the code conflict, and changed the code for Port Louis city to MU-PU.

Country overview: 

Short name	MAURITIUS
ISO code	MU
FIPS code	MP
Language	English (en)
Time zone	+4
Capital	Port Louis

 

Although Mauritius was a British colony from 1814 until it gained independence on 1968-03-12, its place names retain a strong flavor of older times when it was the French colony of Île de France.

Other names of country: 

1. Danish: Mauritius
2. Dutch: Mauritius, Republiek Mauritius (formal)
3. English: Republic of Mauritius (formal)
4. Finnish: Mauritius
5. French: Maurice f
6. German: Mauritius n
7. Icelandic: Máritíus
8. Italian: Maurizio
9. Norwegian: Mauritius, Republikken Mauritius (formal)
10. Portuguese: Maurício m, Maurícia, Maurícias fp, Ilha f Maurício (Portugal), República f do Maurício (formal)
11. Russian: Республика Маврикий (formal)
12. Spanish: Mauricio m
13. Swedish: Mauritius
14. Turkish: Mauritius Cumhuriyeti (formal)

Origin of name: 

named by early explorers after Maurice of Nassau (1567-1625)

Primary subdivisions: 

Mauritius is divided into nine districts, two dependencies, and one region.

District	Typ	HASC	FIPS	Pop-2000	Pop-1990	Area(km.²)	Area(mi.²)	Capital
Agalega Islands	p	MU.AG	MP21			70	27	Port Louis
Black River	d	MU.BL	MP12	60,587	43,768	259	100	Tamarin
Cargados Carajos	p	MU.CC	MP22			1	0	Port Louis
Flacq	d	MU.FL	MP13	126,839	112,773	298	115	Centre de Flacq
Grand Port	d	MU.GP	MP14	106,665	96,667	259	100	Mahebourg
Moka	d	MU.MO	MP15	75,479	65,176	231	89	Moka
Pamplemousses	d	MU.PA	MP16	122,252	101,666	179	69	Pamplemousses
Plaines Wilhems	d	MU.PW	MP17	358,182	321,713	205	79	Beau Bassin-Rose Hill
Port Louis	d	MU.PL	MP18	127,855	133,073	44	17	Port Louis
Rivière du Rempart	d	MU.RR	MP19	98,854	86,779	148	57	Poudre d'Or
Rodrigues	r	MU.RO	MP23	35,779	34,204	104	40	Port Louis
Savanne	d	MU.SA	MP20	66,356	60,841	243	94	Souillac
12 divisions				1,178,848	1,056,660	2,041	787
Typ: d = district, p = dependency, r = region HASC: Hierarchical administrative subdivision codes. If periods are replaced by hyphens, these are the same as the district codes from ISO standard 3166-2. FIPS: Codes from FIPS PUB 10-4. Pop-2000: 2000-07-02 census Pop-1990: 1990-07-01 census

Further subdivisions:

In addition to the divisions listed above, ISO 3166-2 lists the following five cities. The FIPS standard also listed them, calling them "urban councils", until 1991. They are all located within Plaines Wilhems district, except Port Louis, which is in Port Louis district.

City	ISO	FIPS
Beau Bassin-Rose Hill	BR	MP02
Curepipe	CU	MP04
Port Louis	PU	MP07
Quatre Bornes	QB	MP08
Vacoas-Phoenix	VP	MP11

Territorial extent: 

1. The districts (as opposed to the dependencies and region) are all mainly located on Mauritius Island.
2. Agalega Islands is an island group north of Mauritius.
3. Black River includes Île aux Bénitiers (Île Morne).
4. Cargados Carajos consists of a set of islets north of Mauritius, called the Cargados Carajos Shoals (Saint Brandon Rocks).
5. Flacq includes Île aux Cerfs.
6. Rivière du Rempart includes Flat Island, Gabriel Island, Gunner's Quoin, Île d'Ambre, and Round Island.
7. Rodrigues is an island east of Mauritius, with a few adjacent islets and shoals.

Origins of names: 

Pamplemousses: French for grapefruit (plural)

Change history: 

The divisions of Mauritius according to the 1952 census were these:

District	Pop-72	Pop-52
Black River	23,866	13,430
Flacq	89,050	56,867
Grand Port	80,719	52,709
Moka	48,610	27,961
Pamplemousses	68,948	40,663
Plaines Wilhems	261,004	149,399
Port Louis	133,996	84,539
Rivière du Rempart	66,995	40,323
Rodrigues	24,769	13,333
Savanne	53,011	35,309
Other dependencies	366	1,752
Total	851,334	516,556
District: Rodrigues is a dependency. In the 1972 report, "Other dependencies" explicitly means Agalega Islands and Saint Brandon. Pop-72: 1972-06-30 census (source [6]). Pop-52: 1952-06-29 census (source [4]).

1. 1965-11-08: Chagos Archipelago dependency split from Mauritius to form British Indian Ocean Territory.
2. Source [3] (1971) shows Mauritius divided into three district councils, five urban councils, and three dependencies. The district councils (and their capitals) were Moka-Flacq (Quartier Militaire), North (Mapou), and South (Rose Belle). The urban councils were Beau Bassin-Rose Hill, Curepipe, Port Louis, Quatre Bornes, and Vacoas-Phoenix. The dependencies were Agalega Islands, Cargados Carajos Shoals, and Rodrigues Island. The urban councils are the same as the cities mentioned under "Further subdivisions". I believe that these governmental divisions are less representative than the geographical divisions in the main table.
3. ~1976: Moka-Flacq district council (capital Quartier Militaire, FIPS code MP05) split into Flacq and Moka districts. North district council (capital Triolet, FIPS code MP06) split into Pamplemousses and Rivière du Rempart districts. South district council (capital Rose Belle, FIPS code MP10) split into Black River, Grand Port, Plaines Wilhems, and Savanne districts. The five urban councils were apparently absorbed into their respective districts.
4. 2001-11-20: Status of Rodrigues Island changed from dependency to island region.

Other names of subdivisions: 

1. Cargados Carajos: Saint-Brandon (variant)
2. Rodrigues: Rodriguez (obsolete)

Sources: 

1. [1] L'Évaluation des effectifs de la population des pays Africains, Tome I. Groupe de Démographie Africaine, Paris, 1982.
2. [2] There were maps showing the wards on Mauritius Island and the zones on Rodrigues Island at http://ncb.intnet.mu/cso/report/hpcen00/Demogra/apen1.htm and http://ncb.intnet.mu/cso/report/hpcen00/Demogra/appen3.htm, respectively (retrieved 2002-12-15). The links are dead now.
3. [3] Geographic Report No. 16, issued by the office of the Geographer, Department of State, 1971-10-27.
4. [4] Demographic Yearbook , 7th Ed. Statistical Office of the United Nations, New York, 1955 (retrieved 2011-08-20).
5. [5] Annual Digest of Statistics 2009 , Vol. 54. Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, Central Statistics Office, 2010-07 (retrieved 2011-09-17). Contains data from sixteen censuses 1851-2000, limited to total population of the country (excluding dependencies), of Mauritius Island, and of Rodrigues Island (p. 14). Also contains 1990 and 2000 census data by district (p.17).
6. [6] 1979 Demographic Yearbook , 31st Ed. Statistical Office, United Nations, New York, 1980 (retrieved 2011-12-28).