Aruba 🇦🇼

Aruba belongs to the Caribbean, and it is a dependent territory rather than a country in the political sense. Oranjestad is the capital.

By land area it covers 180 km², which ranks it 223rd of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind the Marshall Islands and just ahead of Liechtenstein. Put next to a territory most people can picture, it is a little larger than Liechtenstein.

Around 107,995 people live there, placing it 196th of 249 by population — between Micronesia above it and the United States Virgin Islands below. Measured only against its own subregion, it is 22nd of 28 in size and 14th in population.

Aruba 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 192 member states while still appearing among the 249 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. Aruba 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 currencyAWG
• Its own dialling code+297
• Its own internet domain.aw
• Its own ISO codesaw / ABW
• A designated capitalOranjestad

The coordinates the dataset gives are 12.5° N, 70.0° W, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 1,392 km from the equator, in what geographers would call tropical latitudes.

The Philippines, Burkina Faso and Guinea sit at almost exactly the same latitude on other parts of the globe.

No land border connects it to another territory. That puts it among the 85 entries of 249 here with no land neighbours, which shapes how it trades and who it deals with.

Aruba 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 Curaçao, roughly 120 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 Aruba's dialling code and internet domain are worth knowing before you travel.

Density comes out at around 600 people per square kilometre, which makes it densely populated. For comparison, the median entry on this list sits near 91 per square kilometre.

It recognises 2 languages: Dutch and Papiamento. Dutch, the first listed, is shared with 6 other entries worldwide.

People from Aruba are called Arubans.

Inside the Americas it places 36th of 55 by population, and it accounts for under 1% of everyone living in the Caribbean.

The Aruban florin (AWG) is used only in Aruba among the 249 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. Dutch is listed for 7 entries here, Aruba 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 Aruba sits 14th of 28 by population and 22nd by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Grenada just above and United States Virgin Islands 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.

• 🇬🇩 Grenada
• 🇻🇮 United States Virgin Islands
• 🇭🇹 Haiti

It uses the Aruban florin (ƒ, AWG). No other entry in this dataset uses it, so the currency is specific to Aruba.

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

The top-level domain is .aw. To phone it from abroad you dial +297. Its ISO codes are aw and ABW, which is what most databases and flag files use.

Aruba is not a UN member state. The dataset does not record which state administers it, so this page does not guess. Of the 249 entries here, 57 are territories or observers rather than member states.