Cook Islands 🇨🇰

The Cook Islands sits in Polynesia and is listed as a dependency rather than an independent state. The capital is Avarua.

Some 17,000 people call it home, placing it 225th of 249 by population — between Palau above it and Anguilla below. Within Polynesia alone it is the 5th largest of 10 and the 5th most populous.

Its territory runs to 236 km², which ranks it 220th of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Saint Pierre and Miquelon and just ahead of American Samoa. Put next to a territory most people can picture, it is around a fifth smaller than the Maldives.

Cook Islands 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. Cook Islands 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 currencyCKD, NZD
• Its own dialling code+682
• Its own internet domain.ck
• Its own ISO codesck / COK
• A designated capitalAvarua

Plotted on a globe it falls at 21.2° south, 159.8° west, which puts it in the southern hemisphere, roughly 2,364 km from the equator, in what geographers would call tropical latitudes.

Follow that same latitude east or west and you reach Namibia, Madagascar and Botswana — places that share its distance from the equator but little else.

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.

Cook 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 Niue, roughly 1,080 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 Cook Islands's dialling code and internet domain are worth knowing before you travel.

Population divided by land area gives roughly 72 people per square kilometre, which makes it less crowded than the typical entry on this list. Half the entries in this dataset fall below roughly 91 per square kilometre.

2 languages carry official status: Cook Islands Māori and English. Cook Islands Māori is listed for no other entry in this dataset, which makes it effectively unique to the Cook Islands.

The demonym is Cook Islander, so residents are Cook Islanders.

Inside Oceania it places 18th of 27 by population, and it accounts for 2.5% of everyone living in Polynesia.

Cook Islands does not have the New Zealand dollar to itself. It is one of 5 entries on this site that use the currency, whose code is NZD, 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 NZD travels further than you might expect.

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

Zoom in from the world to Polynesia and Cook Islands sits 5th of 10 by population and 5th by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is American Samoa just above and Wallis and Futuna just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

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

• 🇦🇸 American Samoa
• 🇼🇫 Wallis and Futuna
• 🇵🇫 French Polynesia

More than one currency circulates: Cook Islands dollar (CKD) and New Zealand dollar (NZD). No other entry in this dataset uses it, so the currency is specific to the Cook Islands.

If a quiz asks for the capital of the Cook Islands, the answer is Avarua.

Its internet country code is .ck. To phone it from abroad you dial +682. In ISO terms it is ck in two letters and COK in three.

The Cook Islands 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.