Northern Mariana Islands 🇲🇵

The Northern Mariana Islands sits in Micronesia and is listed as a dependency rather than an independent state. In formal use it is Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. The capital is Saipan.

Some 44,278 people call it home, placing it 214th of 250 by population — between the Turks and Caicos Islands above it and Sint Maarten below. Within Micronesia alone it is the 4th largest of 7 and the 4th most populous.

Its territory runs to 464 km², which ranks it 202nd of the 250 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Andorra and just ahead of Palau. That makes it about half again the size of Malta.

Northern Mariana 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 193 member states while still appearing among the 250 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. Northern Mariana 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 currencyUSD
• Its own dialling code+1670
• Its own internet domain.mp
• Its own ISO codesmp / MNP
• A designated capitalSaipan

Its reference point sits at 15.2° north and 145.8° east, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 1,692 km from the equator, in what geographers would call tropical latitudes.

Countries on the same parallel, far away in longitude, include Sudan, Chad and Niger.

There is no land frontier at all — every boundary it has is a coastline. That puts it among the 85 entries of 250 here with no land neighbours, so everything and everyone arrives by sea or by air.

Northern Mariana 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 Guam, roughly 220 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. United States Minor Outlying Islands sits in a different world region from Northern Mariana Islands yet ranks 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 Northern Mariana Islands's dialling code and internet domain are worth knowing before you travel.

Population divided by land area gives roughly 95 people per square kilometre, which makes it more crowded than the typical entry on this list. The median across all 250 entries here is about 90 per square kilometre.

Someone from the Northern Mariana Islands is an American.

It recognises 3 languages: Carolinian, Chamorro and English. Carolinian is listed for no other entry in this dataset, which makes it effectively unique to the Northern Mariana Islands.

Inside Oceania it places 15th of 27 by population, and it accounts for 8.4% of everyone living in Micronesia.

Northern Mariana Islands does not have the United States dollar to itself. It is one of 20 entries on this site that use the currency, whose code is USD, 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 USD travels further than you might expect.

Language reaches wider still. English is listed for 91 entries here, Northern Mariana 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 Micronesia and Northern Mariana Islands sits 4th of 7 by population and 4th by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Micronesia just above and Marshall Islands just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

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

• 🇫🇲 Micronesia
• 🇲🇭 Marshall Islands
• 🇬🇺 Guam

Money there is the United States dollar ($, USD). That is a shared currency: 19 other entries use it, including American Samoa, the Bahamas, the British Indian Ocean Territory, the British Virgin Islands and Cambodia.

Websites there use the .mp domain. The international dialling code is +1670. Standard country codes: mp and MNP.

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

It does not hold a UN seat of its own. The dataset does not record which state administers it, so this page does not guess. Of the 250 entries here, 57 are territories or observers rather than member states.