Marshall Islands 🇲🇭

The Marshall Islands lies in Micronesia, part of Oceania. In formal use it is Republic of the Marshall Islands. Majuro is the capital.

By land area it covers 181 km², which ranks it 223rd of the 250 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind American Samoa and just ahead of Aruba. That makes it a little larger than Liechtenstein.

Around 37,548 people live there, placing it 220th of 250 by population — between Monaco above it and San Marino below. Measured only against its own subregion, it is 6th of 7 in size and 5th in population.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Marshall Islands ranks 223rd of 250 by area and 220th by population. That works out at less than a thousandth of a percent of the combined land area of all 250 entries and less than a thousandth of a percent 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 Marshall Islands in the size ordering are American Samoa at 199 km² and Aruba at 180 km², against Marshall Islands's 181 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Marshall Islands averages 207 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it densely settled by global standards — 71st 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.

The coordinates the dataset gives are 9.0° N, 168.0° E, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 1,002 km from the equator, in what geographers would call the equatorial belt.

Ethiopia, Nigeria and Venezuela sit at almost exactly the same latitude on other parts of the globe.

There is no land frontier at all — every boundary it has is a coastline. That puts it among the 85 entries of 250 here with no land neighbours, which shapes how it trades and who it deals with.

Marshall 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 Kiribati, roughly 1,010 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.

Being surrounded by water rather than by neighbours pushes a country's relationships outward. United States Minor Outlying Islands sits in a different world region from Marshall Islands yet ranks among its closest geographic company — the kind of pairing that only shows up once you stop thinking in continents.

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 Marshall Islands's dialling code and internet domain are worth knowing before you travel.

Population divided by land area gives roughly 207 people per square kilometre, which makes it densely populated. For comparison, the median entry on this list sits near 90 per square kilometre.

It recognises 2 languages: English and Marshallese. Marshallese is listed for no other entry in this dataset, which makes it effectively unique to the Marshall Islands. English, the first listed, is shared with 90 other entries worldwide.

People from the Marshall Islands are called Marshallese.

Inside Oceania it places 16th of 27 by population, and it accounts for 7.1% of everyone living in Micronesia.

Zoom in from the world to Micronesia and Marshall Islands sits 5th of 7 by population and 6th by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Northern Mariana Islands just above and Palau just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

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

• 🇲🇵 Northern Mariana Islands
• 🇵🇼 Palau
• 🇬🇺 Guam

Marshall Islands does not have the United States dollar to itself. It is one of 20 entries on this site that use the currency, whose code is USD, and the others include listed below. A shared currency usually points at something real — a monetary union, a currency board, a former colonial administration, or a small economy pegging itself to a large neighbour's money — and it means a price quoted in USD travels further than you might expect.

Language reaches wider still. English is listed for 91 entries here, Marshall 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.

It uses the United States dollar ($, USD). That is a shared currency: 19 other entries use it, including American Samoa, the Bahamas, the British Indian Ocean Territory, the British Virgin Islands and Cambodia.

The top-level domain is .mh. The international dialling code is +692. Its ISO codes are mh and MHL, which is what most databases and flag files use.

Majuro is the seat of government and the answer most quizzes are looking for.

It holds a seat at the United Nations, one of 193 entries here that do. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 250 rather than the familiar 195.