Jamaica 🇯🇲

Jamaica lies in the Caribbean, part of the Americas. Its seat of government is Kingston.

It covers 10,991 km², which ranks it 166th of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Qatar and just ahead of Kosovo. That makes it a fraction smaller than Qatar.

The population is about 2.8 million, placing it 140th of 249 by population — between Qatar above it and the Gambia below. Within the Caribbean alone it is the 5th largest of 28 and the 5th most populous.

Jamaica 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 Cayman Islands, roughly 340 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 Jamaica's dialling code and internet domain are worth knowing before you travel.

Plotted on a globe it falls at 18.3° north, 77.5° west, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 2,032 km from the equator, in what geographers would call tropical latitudes.

Follow that same latitude east or west and you reach India, Mali and Mauritania — places that share its distance from the equator but little else.

It shares no land border with anyone. That puts it among the 85 entries of 249 here with no land neighbours, a group made up mostly of islands and island groups.

Density comes out at around 258 people per square kilometre, which makes it densely populated. Half the entries in this dataset fall below roughly 91 per square kilometre.

Someone from Jamaica is a Jamaican.

Officially it is multilingual, listing English and Jamaican Patois. Jamaican Patois is listed for no other entry in this dataset, which makes it effectively unique to Jamaica. English, the first listed, is shared with 90 other entries worldwide.

Against the Americas as a whole it is the 23rd most populous of 55 entries, and it accounts for 6.4% of everyone living in the Caribbean.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Jamaica ranks 166th of 249 by area and 140th by population. That works out at less than a thousandth of a percent of the combined land area of all 249 entries and 0.035% 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 Jamaica in the size ordering are Qatar at 11,586 km² and Kosovo at 10,908 km², against Jamaica's 10,991 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Jamaica averages 258 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it densely settled by global standards — 58th 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 Jamaican dollar (JMD) is used only in Jamaica 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, Jamaica 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.

Money there is the Jamaican dollar ($, JMD). That currency appears nowhere else on this list.

Kingston is the city to remember for this country.

Websites there use the .jm domain. The international dialling code is +1876. Standard country codes: jm and JAM.

Jamaica is one of the 192 UN member states in this dataset. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 249 rather than the familiar 195.

Zoom in from the world to Caribbean and Jamaica sits 5th of 28 by population and 5th by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Puerto Rico just above and Trinidad and Tobago 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.

• 🇵🇷 Puerto Rico
• 🇹🇹 Trinidad and Tobago
• 🇭🇹 Haiti