Tonga 🇹🇴

Filed under Oceania and more precisely Polynesia, Tonga is a sovereign state. The long form of the name is Kingdom of Tonga. The capital is Nuku'alofa.

Its territory runs to 747 km², which ranks it 194th of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Dominica and just ahead of Singapore. Put next to a country most people can picture, it is a little larger than Singapore.

Some 104,175 people call it home, placing it 198th of 249 by population — between the United States Virgin Islands above it and Jersey below. Among the 10 entries in Polynesia it ranks 3rd by area and 3rd by population.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Tonga ranks 194th of 249 by area and 198th 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 Tonga in the size ordering are Dominica at 751 km² and Singapore at 710 km², against Tonga's 747 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Tonga averages 139 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it middling in density — 91st 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.

Plotted on a globe it falls at 20.0° south, 175.0° west, which puts it in the southern hemisphere, roughly 2,226 km from the equator, in what geographers would call tropical latitudes.

Follow that same latitude east or west and you reach Namibia, Mozambique and Madagascar — 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.

Tonga 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 Niue, roughly 550 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 Tonga's dialling code and internet domain are worth knowing before you travel.

Spread across 747 km², that works out at about 139 people per square kilometre, which makes it more crowded than the typical entry on this list. For comparison, the median entry on this list sits near 91 per square kilometre.

The demonym is Tongan, so residents are Tongans.

2 languages carry official status: English and Tongan. Tongan is listed for no other entry in this dataset, which makes it effectively unique to Tonga. English, the first listed, is shared with 90 other entries worldwide.

Inside Oceania it places 13th of 27 by population, and it accounts for 15% of everyone living in Polynesia.

Zoom in from the world to Polynesia and Tonga sits 3rd of 10 by population and 3rd by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Samoa just above and American Samoa just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

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

• 🇼🇸 Samoa
• 🇦🇸 American Samoa
• 🇵🇫 French Polynesia

The Tongan paʻanga (TOP) is used only in Tonga 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, Tonga 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.

It uses the Tongan paʻanga (T$, TOP). It is issued for Tonga alone.

The top-level domain is .to. To phone it from abroad you dial +676. In ISO terms it is to in two letters and TON in three.

If a quiz asks for the capital of Tonga, the answer is Nuku'alofa.

Tonga 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.