Cayman Islands 🇰🇾

The Cayman Islands is a territory in the Caribbean, and it is not a sovereign state in its own right. Unlike most entries, its formal name adds nothing to the short one. Its seat of government is George Town.

The population is about 74,457, placing it 205th of 250 by population — between Andorra above it and Dominica below. Measured only against its own subregion, it is 20th of 28 in size and 18th in population.

The land area is 264 km², which ranks it 217th of the 250 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind the Maldives and just ahead of Saint Kitts and Nevis. For scale, it is a fraction smaller than the Maldives.

Cayman Islands does not hold a United Nations seat of its own. It is administered as a dependency or overseas territory rather than as a sovereign state, which is why it sits outside the 193 member states while still appearing among the 250 entries on this site.

Not holding a UN seat is not the same as having no self-government, and the administrative details make that clear. Cayman Islands has 5 of the five markers of separate administration tracked on this page — its own currency, its own dialling code, its own internet domain, its own iso codes and a designated capital. In day-to-day terms it is run substantially as its own jurisdiction.

• Its own currencyKYD
• Its own dialling code+1345
• Its own internet domain.ky
• Its own ISO codesky / CYM
• A designated capitalGeorge Town

Its reference point sits at 19.5° north and 80.5° west, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 2,171 km from the equator, in what geographers would call tropical latitudes.

Countries on the same parallel, far away in longitude, include India, Mauritania and Oman.

It shares no land border with anyone. That puts it among the 85 entries of 250 here with no land neighbours, so everything and everyone arrives by sea or by air.

Cayman Islands has no land border with any country, which changes what "nearby" means. Measured centre to centre in a straight line, the closest other entry on this site is Cuba, roughly 230 km away. These are approximate distances between representative points, not the shortest crossing between two shorelines, so treat them as a sense of scale rather than a sailing chart.

No land border also means no land crossing: everything and everyone arrives by sea or by air. That single fact drives a lot of what follows on this page, from how goods reach the shops to why Cayman Islands's dialling code and internet domain are worth knowing before you travel.

Population divided by land area gives roughly 282 people per square kilometre, which makes it densely populated. The median across all 250 entries here is about 90 per square kilometre.

Someone from the Cayman Islands is a Caymanian.

English is the only official language. Another 90 entries list English too — among them American Samoa, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda and Australia.

Against the Americas as a whole it is the 41st most populous of 56 entries, and it accounts for under 1% of everyone living in the Caribbean.

The Cayman Islands dollar (KYD) is used only in Cayman Islands among the 250 entries on this site. Its own currency is one of the clearest markers of an economy that sets its own monetary policy rather than importing somebody else's.

Language reaches wider still. English is listed for 91 entries here, Cayman Islands among them, so a visitor who speaks it can be understood across a large part of the map. Shared language tends to outlive the empires, trade routes and migrations that spread it, which is why the linguistic map and the political one rarely line up.

Zoom in from the world to Caribbean and Cayman Islands sits 18th of 28 by population and 20th by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Antigua and Barbuda just above and Dominica just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

Haiti is the largest of the group by population, and every entry in Caribbean has its own page here if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time.

• 🇦🇬 Antigua and Barbuda
• 🇩🇲 Dominica
• 🇭🇹 Haiti

Money there is the Cayman Islands dollar ($, KYD). That currency appears nowhere else on this list.

Websites there use the .ky domain. Calls from overseas start with +1345. Standard country codes: ky and CYM.

George Town is the city to remember for this territory.

On the UN list it does not appear as a member. The dataset does not record which state administers it, so this page does not guess. Of the 250 entries here, 57 are territories or observers rather than member states.