United Kingdom 🇬🇧

The United Kingdom is a country in Northern Europe, one of the 16 entries this site files under that subregion. The long form of the name is United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The capital is London.

Some 69.2 million people call it home, placing it 21st of 250 by population — between Thailand above it and Tanzania below. Within Northern Europe alone it is the 4th largest of 16 and the 1st most populous.

Its territory runs to 242,900 km², which ranks it 81st of the 250 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Guinea and just ahead of Uganda. Put next to a country most people can picture, it is almost exactly the same size as Romania.

Population divided by land area gives roughly 285 people per square kilometre, which makes it densely populated. Half the entries in this dataset fall below roughly 90 per square kilometre.

Officially it is monolingual: English. English is one of the widely shared official languages here, listed by 90 other entries including American Samoa, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda and Australia.

Someone from the United Kingdom is a British.

Inside Europe it places 3rd of 53 by population, and it accounts for 63% of everyone living in Northern Europe.

Put next to every other entry on this site, United Kingdom ranks 81st of 250 by area and 21st by population. That works out at 0.16% of the combined land area of all 250 entries and 0.85% 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 United Kingdom in the size ordering are Guinea at 245,857 km² and Uganda at 241,550 km², against United Kingdom's 242,900 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. United Kingdom averages 285 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it densely settled by global standards — 49th 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.

Within Northern Europe, United Kingdom is the most populous of the 16 entries this site lists, and 4th by area. Sweden is next in line by population.

Every entry in Northern Europe has its own guide here, so if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time, Sweden is the place to carry on.

• 🇸🇪 Sweden
• 🇬🇧 United Kingdom

Plotted on a globe it falls at 54.0° north, 2.0° west, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 6,011 km from the equator, in what geographers would call temperate latitudes.

The prime meridian also passes close to it, so it straddles the line that divides east from west.

Its land neighbours number 1: Ireland.

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

United Kingdom does not have the British pound to itself. It is one of 6 entries on this site that use the currency, whose code is GBP, 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 GBP travels further than you might expect.

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

The currency is the British pound (£, GBP). No other entry in this dataset uses it, so the currency is specific to the United Kingdom.

London is the city to remember for this country.

Its internet country code is .uk. To phone it from abroad you dial +44. Standard country codes: gb and GBR.

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.