Barbados 🇧🇧

Barbados lies in the Caribbean, part of the Americas. Its seat of government is Bridgetown.

It is home to roughly 282,467 people, placing it 185th of 249 by population — between New Caledonia above it and French Polynesia below. Within the Caribbean alone it is the 15th largest of 28 and the 10th most populous.

It covers 430 km², which ranks it 206th of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Antigua and Barbuda and just ahead of Heard Island and McDonald Islands. For scale, it is around a quarter larger than Malta.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Barbados ranks 206th of 249 by area and 185th by population. That works out at less than a thousandth of a percent of the combined land area of all 249 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 Barbados in the size ordering are Antigua and Barbuda at 442 km² and Heard Island and McDonald Islands at 412 km², against Barbados's 430 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Barbados averages 657 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it one of the most densely settled places on the whole list — 17th of the 247 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 13.2° N, 59.5° W, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 1,466 km from the equator, in what geographers would call tropical latitudes.

Sudan, Chad and Yemen 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 249 here with no land neighbours, which shapes how it trades and who it deals with.

Barbados 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 Saint Lucia, roughly 175 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 Barbados's dialling code and internet domain are worth knowing before you travel.

Density comes out at around 657 people per square kilometre, which makes it densely populated. For comparison, the median entry on this list sits near 91 per square kilometre.

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

Someone from Barbados is a Barbadian.

Against the Americas as a whole it is the 32nd most populous of 55 entries, and it accounts for under 1% of everyone living in the Caribbean.

Zoom in from the world to Caribbean and Barbados sits 10th of 28 by population and 15th by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Martinique just above and Saint Lucia 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.

• 🇲🇶 Martinique
• 🇱🇨 Saint Lucia
• 🇭🇹 Haiti

The Barbadian dollar (BBD) is used only in Barbados 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. English is listed for 91 entries here, Barbados 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 Barbadian dollar ($, BBD). No other entry in this dataset uses it, so the currency is specific to Barbados.

Its internet country code is .bb. Calls from overseas start with +1246. Standard country codes: bb and BRB.

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

It holds a seat at the United Nations, one of 192 entries here that do. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 249 rather than the familiar 195.