Dominican Republic 🇩🇴

The Dominican Republic lies in the Caribbean, part of the Americas. Unlike most entries, its formal name adds nothing to the short one. Santo Domingo is the capital.

By land area it covers 48,671 km², which ranks it 133rd of the 250 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Slovakia and just ahead of Estonia. For scale, it is a little larger than Denmark.

Around 11.4 million people live there, placing it 85th of 250 by population — between Jordan above it and the United Arab Emirates below. Measured only against its own subregion, it is 2nd of 28 in size and 2nd in population.

Its reference point sits at 19.0° north and 70.7° west, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 2,115 km from the equator, in what geographers would call tropical latitudes.

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

It borders 1 neighbour: Haiti.

It has both a coastline and land borders, which is the most common arrangement of all.

Population divided by land area gives roughly 235 people per square kilometre, which makes it densely populated. The median across all 250 entries here is about 90 per square kilometre.

Spanish is the only official language. Spanish is one of the widely shared official languages here, listed by 23 other entries including Argentina, Belize, Bolivia and Chile.

Someone from the Dominican Republic is a Dominican.

Inside the Americas it places 14th of 56 by population, and it accounts for 26% of everyone living in the Caribbean.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Dominican Republic ranks 133rd of 250 by area and 85th by population. That works out at 0.032% of the combined land area of all 250 entries and 0.14% of their combined population. Those denominators matter: this list includes territories and dependencies as well as UN member states, so a rank here is not the same as a rank among sovereign countries.

For a sense of scale, the entries immediately either side of Dominican Republic in the size ordering are Slovakia at 49,037 km² and Estonia at 45,227 km², against Dominican Republic's 48,671 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Dominican Republic averages 235 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it densely settled by global standards — 65th of the 248 entries that have both a population and a measured area. Total area includes inland water, so the true figure for habitable land is higher than this.

Zoom in from the world to Caribbean and Dominican Republic sits 2nd of 28 by population and 2nd by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Haiti just above and Cuba 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.

• 🇭🇹 Haiti
• 🇨🇺 Cuba
• 🇭🇹 Haiti

The Dominican peso (DOP) is used only in Dominican Republic 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. Spanish is listed for 24 entries here, Dominican Republic 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.

Money there is the Dominican peso ($, DOP). It is issued for the Dominican Republic alone.

If a quiz asks for the capital of the Dominican Republic, the answer is Santo Domingo.

Websites there use the .do domain. Calls from overseas start with +1. Standard country codes: do and DOM.

The Dominican Republic is one of the 193 UN member states in this dataset. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 250 rather than the familiar 195.