Romania 🇷🇴

Romania is a sovereign country in Southeast Europe, in the wider region of Europe. The capital is Bucharest.

Its territory runs to 238,391 km², which ranks it 83rd of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Ghana and just ahead of Laos. That makes it almost exactly the same size as the United Kingdom.

Some 19.1 million people call it home, placing it 67th of 249 by population — between Chile above it and Somalia below. Measured only against its own subregion, it is 1st of 9 in size and 1st in population.

The coordinates the dataset gives are 46.0° N, 25.0° E, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 5,121 km from the equator, in what geographers would call temperate latitudes.

Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Saint Pierre and Miquelon sit at almost exactly the same latitude on other parts of the globe.

It borders 5 neighbours: Bulgaria, Hungary, Moldova, Serbia and Ukraine. The largest of them by area is Ukraine, which is also the most populous. Together those neighbours hold about 62.9 million people.

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

Population divided by land area gives roughly 80 people per square kilometre, which makes it less crowded than the typical entry on this list. For comparison, the median entry on this list sits near 91 per square kilometre.

Officially it is monolingual: Romanian. No other entry in this dataset lists Romanian, so on this list it stands alone.

The demonym is Romanian, so residents are Romanians.

Inside Europe it places 9th of 53 by population, and it accounts for 42% of everyone living in Southeast Europe.

Within Southeast Europe, Romania is the most populous of the 9 entries this site lists, and the largest by area as well. Serbia is next in line by population.

Every entry in Southeast Europe has its own guide here, so if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time, Serbia is the place to carry on.

• 🇷🇸 Serbia
• 🇷🇴 Romania

The Romanian leu (RON) is used only in Romania 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.

Romanian is listed for Romania 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.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Romania ranks 83rd of 249 by area and 67th by population. That works out at 0.16% of the combined land area of all 249 entries and 0.23% 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 Romania in the size ordering are Ghana at 238,533 km² and Laos at 236,800 km², against Romania's 238,391 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Romania averages 80 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it middling in density — 133rd 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 currency is the Romanian leu (lei, RON). It is issued for Romania alone.

Bucharest is the city to remember for this country.

Its internet country code is .ro. Calls from overseas start with +40. In ISO terms it is ro in two letters and ROU in three.

As a sovereign state it is among the 192 UN members listed here. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 249 rather than the familiar 195.