Myanmar 🇲🇲

Myanmar is a sovereign country in South-Eastern Asia, in the wider region of Asia. In formal use it is Republic of the Union of Myanmar. The capital is Naypyidaw.

Its territory runs to 676,578 km², which ranks it 41st of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Zambia and just ahead of Afghanistan. That makes it around a fifth smaller than Türkiye.

Some 54.5 million people call it home, placing it 27th of 249 by population — between Kenya above it and Colombia below. Within South-Eastern Asia alone it is the 2nd largest of 11 and the 5th most populous.

Population divided by land area gives roughly 81 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.

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

Someone from Myanmar is a Burmese.

Inside Asia it places 12th of 50 by population, and it accounts for 7.8% of everyone living in South-Eastern Asia.

Zoom in from the world to South-Eastern Asia and Myanmar sits 5th of 11 by population and 2nd by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Thailand just above and Malaysia just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

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

• 🇹🇭 Thailand
• 🇲🇾 Malaysia
• 🇮🇩 Indonesia

Plotted on a globe it falls at 22.0° north, 98.0° east, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 2,449 km from the equator, in what geographers would call tropical latitudes.

The Tropic of Cancer passes across it. Follow that same latitude east or west and you reach Mexico, Mauritania and Oman — places that share its distance from the equator but little else.

5 countries share a land border with it: Bangladesh, China, India, Laos and Thailand. The largest of them by area is China, while the most populous is India. Together those neighbours hold about 3.11 billion people.

It has both a coastline and land borders, which is the most common arrangement of all.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Myanmar ranks 41st of 249 by area and 27th by population. That works out at 0.45% of the combined land area of all 249 entries and 0.67% 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 Myanmar in the size ordering are Zambia at 752,612 km² and Afghanistan at 652,230 km², against Myanmar's 676,578 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Myanmar averages 81 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it middling in density — 131st 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 Burmese kyat (MMK) is used only in Myanmar 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.

Burmese is listed for Myanmar 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.

The currency is the Burmese kyat (Ks, MMK). That currency appears nowhere else on this list.

If a quiz asks for the capital of Myanmar, the answer is Naypyidaw.

Its internet country code is .mm. The international dialling code is +95. Standard country codes: mm and MMR.

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.