United States 🇺🇸

The United States is an independent state in North America, and a member of the United Nations. Treaties and official documents call it United States of America. Its seat of government is Washington D.C.

It is home to roughly 340.1 million people, placing it 3rd of 249 by population — between China above it and Indonesia below. Measured only against its own subregion, it is 2nd of 7 in size and 1st in population.

The land area is 9,372,610 km², which ranks it 5th of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind China and just ahead of Brazil. That makes it a fraction smaller than China.

Population divided by land area gives roughly 36 people per square kilometre, which makes it less crowded than the typical entry on this list. The median across all 249 entries here is about 91 per square kilometre.

The one official language is English. Another 90 entries list English too — among them American Samoa, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda and Australia.

People from the United States are called Americans.

Against the Americas as a whole it is the 1st most populous of 55 entries, and it accounts for 66% of everyone living in North America.

Put next to every other entry on this site, United States ranks 5th of 249 by area and 3rd by population. That works out at 6.3% of the combined land area of all 249 entries and 4.2% 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 United States in the size ordering are China at 9,706,961 km² and Brazil at 8,515,767 km², against United States's 9,372,610 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. United States averages 36 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it thinly settled by global standards — 181st 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.

Within North America, United States is the most populous of the 7 entries this site lists, and 2nd by area. Mexico is next in line by population.

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

• 🇲🇽 Mexico
• 🇺🇸 United States

Its reference point sits at 38.0° north and 97.0° west, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 4,230 km from the equator, in what geographers would call temperate latitudes.

Countries on the same parallel, far away in longitude, include Türkiye, Spain and Turkmenistan.

Its land neighbours number 2: Canada and Mexico. The largest of them by area is Canada, while the most populous is Mexico. Together those neighbours hold about 172.1 million people.

Unlike its landlocked neighbours it reaches the sea directly, while also sharing land frontiers.

United States does not have the United States dollar to itself. It is one of 19 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, United States 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 United States dollar ($, USD). It is issued for the United States alone.

The top-level domain is .us. The international dialling code is +1. Its ISO codes are us and USA, which is what most databases and flag files use.

Washington D.C. is the seat of government and the answer most quizzes are looking for.

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.