Maldives 🇲🇻

The Maldives is a country in Southern Asia, one of the 9 entries this site files under that subregion. In formal use it is Republic of the Maldives. Malé is the capital.

Around 527,799 people live there, placing it 173rd of 249 by population — between Malta above it and Cape Verde below. Among the 9 entries in Southern Asia it ranks 9th by area and 9th by population.

By land area it covers 300 km², which ranks it 215th of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Malta and just ahead of the Cayman Islands. For scale, it is a fraction smaller than Malta.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Maldives ranks 215th of 249 by area and 173rd 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 Maldives in the size ordering are Malta at 316 km² and Cayman Islands at 264 km², against Maldives's 300 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Maldives averages 1,759 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it one of the most densely settled places on the whole list — 9th 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.

Its reference point sits at 3.3° north and 73.0° east, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 362 km from the equator, in what geographers would call the equatorial belt.

Countries on the same parallel, far away in longitude, include Colombia, Malaysia and Guyana.

It shares no land border with anyone. That puts it among the 85 entries of 249 here with no land neighbours, so everything and everyone arrives by sea or by air.

Maldives 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 Sri Lanka, roughly 980 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.

Being surrounded by water rather than by neighbours pushes a country's relationships outward. British Indian Ocean Territory and Seychelles sit in a different world region from Maldives yet rank among its closest geographic company — the kind of pairing that only shows up once you stop thinking in continents.

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 Maldives's dialling code and internet domain are worth knowing before you travel.

Population divided by land area gives roughly 1,759 people per square kilometre, which makes it among the most densely populated places on earth. The median across all 249 entries here is about 91 per square kilometre.

Someone from the Maldives is a Maldivan.

The one official language is Maldivian. No other entry in this dataset lists Maldivian, so on this list it stands alone.

Inside Asia it places 49th of 50 by population, and it accounts for under 1% of everyone living in Southern Asia.

Within Southern Asia, Maldives is the least populous of the 9 entries listed here, and 9th by area. Bhutan is the next step up. Being the smallest of a group is not the same as being small in absolute terms — the subregional context is what gives the figure meaning.

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

• 🇧🇹 Bhutan
• 🇮🇳 India

The Maldivian rufiyaa (MVR) is used only in Maldives 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.

Maldivian is listed for Maldives and for no other entry on this site. A language confined to one country is unusual, and it is normally a sign of long isolation or of deliberate revival.

Money there is the Maldivian rufiyaa (.ރ, MVR). It shares that currency with.

If a quiz asks for the capital of the Maldives, the answer is Malé.

Websites there use the .mv domain. To phone it from abroad you dial +960. Standard country codes: mv and MDV.

The Maldives 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.