Statoid Factoids

Infrequently Asked Questions about Statoids

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The data listed here come from the book "Administrative Subdivisions of Countries", by Gwillim Law. Updates to the book, as posted on this site, have been taken into account.

Q. What are the largest states and provinces in the world, in terms of population?

A. This table shows all of the statoids (for my definition of statoid, see What are Statoids?) with a listed population over 40,000,000. Bear in mind that the data are not really comparable, because they come from censuses taken in different years.

Statoid	Country	Population
Uttar Pradesh	India	199,812,341
Maharashtra	India	112,374,333
Guangdong	China	104,303,132
Bihar	India	104,099,452
Shandong	China	95,793,065
Henan	China	94,023,567
West Bengal	India	91,276,115
Andhra Pradesh	India	84,580,777
Sichuan	China	80,418,200
Jiangsu	China	78,659,903
Punjab	Pakistan	73,621,290
Madhya Pradesh	India	72,626,809
Tamil Nadu	India	72,147,030
Hebei	China	71,854,202
Rajasthan	India	68,548,437
Hunan	China	65,683,722
Karnataka	India	61,095,297
Gujarat	India	60,439,692
Anhui	China	59,500,510
Hubei	China	57,237,740
Zhejiang	China	54,426,891
Dhaka	Bangladesh	47,424,418
Guangxi Zhuang	China	46,026,629
Yunnan	China	45,966,239
Jiangxi	China	44,567,475
Liaoning	China	43,746,323
Jawa Barat	Indonesia	43,053,732
Odisha	India	41,974,218
São Paulo	Brazil	41,262,199

 

Q. What are the largest states and provinces in the world, in terms of area?

A. This table shows all of the statoids with a listed area over 750,000 km.².

Statoid	Country	Area(km.²)
Sakha	Russia	3,103,200
Western Australia	Australia	2,527,621
Krasnoyarsk	Russia	2,277,800
Nunavut	Canada	2,093,190
Xinjiang Uygur	China	1,743,441
Queensland	Australia	1,736,587
Amazonas	Brazil	1,559,159
Quebec	Canada	1,542,056
Alaska	United States	1,530,700
Northern Territory	Australia	1,356,170
Northwest Territories	Canada	1,346,106
Pará	Brazil	1,247,955
Nei Mongol	China	1,181,104
Xizang	China	1,178,577
Ontario	Canada	1,076,395
South Australia	Australia	984,377
Unorganized	Greenland	972,000
British Columbia	Canada	944,735
Mato Grosso	Brazil	903,366
New South Wales	Australia	801,425
Irkutsk	Russia	767,900
Khabarovsk	Russia	752,600
Yamal-Nenets	Russia	750,300

 

Q. What are the smallest states and provinces in the world, in terms of population? area?

A. I prefer not to get into questions like this one. The smallest are so nearly equal that their rankings are very unstable. They can be upset by a new census, a different statistical method for estimating populations, a change in the rules for calculating areas (include inland water areas? coastal waters? how far out? at high tide or low?), or a different criterion for what constitutes a statoid. Note that several statoids, mostly in the Antarctic region, are listed as uninhabited, although scientific or military personnel spend time there in rotation. I will mention that the country of least area in the ISO 3166-1 standard is Vatican City, with a territory of 0.44 km.².

Q. What are the most densely populated states and provinces in the world?

A. This table shows the statoids with a population density of over 20,000 people per square kilometer. Obviously, statoids whose population or area were not available couldn't be listed. Also, roundoff errors might be fairly significant when the area figures are small.

Statoid	Country	Population	Area(km.²)	Density
Kwun Tong	Hong Kong	622,152	11	56,559
Macau	Macau	469,009	9	52,112
Wong Tai Sin	Hong Kong	420,183	9	46,687
Yau Tsim Mong	Hong Kong	307,878	7	43,983
Sham Shui Po	Hong Kong	380,855	9	42,317
Kowloon City	Hong Kong	377,351	10	37,735
Al Qahirah	Egypt	7,786,640	214	36,386
Eastern	Hong Kong	588,094	19	30,952
Kwai Tsing	Hong Kong	511,167	23	22,225
Beirut	Lebanon	390,503	18	21,695
Ville de Paris	France	2,268,265	105	21,603
Central and Western	Hong Kong	251,519	12	20,960

 

Q. What are the least densely populated states and provinces in the world?

A. This table shows the inhabited statoids with the lowest density, with the same caveats as the previous table. Also note the answer to the question about smallest states and provinces.

Statoid	Country	Population	Area(km.²)	Density
Unorganized	Greenland	243	972,000	0.0003
Kerguelen	French Southern Terr.	80	7,215	0.0111
Nunavut	Canada	31,906	2,093,190	0.0152
Qaasuitsup	Greenland	17,679	660,000	0.0268
Northwest Territories	Canada	41,462	1,346,106	0.0308
Sermersooq	Greenland	20,954	635,600	0.0330
Svalbard	Svalbard and Jan Mayen	2,481	62,049	0.0400
Crozet Archipelago	French Southern Terr.	30	505	0.0594
Yukon	Canada	33,897	482,443	0.0703
Chukot	Russia	53,824	737,700	0.0730
Qeqqata	Greenland	9,686	115,500	0.0839
Alto Paraguay	Paraguay	11,587	82,349	0.1407
Northern Territory	Australia	192,898	1,356,170	0.1422
Borkou	Chad	97,251	600,350	0.1620
Illizi	Algeria	52,333	284,618	0.1839

 

Q. Which countries have the most statoids?

A. The Statoids site lists 200 divisions of the United Kingdom, 119 divisions for Latvia, 112 divisions for Uganda, 96 departments for France, 84 municipalities for the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and 83 "federal subjects" for Russia.

Q. Are there any statoids whose names are palindromes (spelled the same backwards and forwards)?

A. Yes, there are eight. (Accents are usually ignored in word puzzles of this sort.) They are: Hajjah, Yemen; Karak, Jordan; Matam, Senegal (the latest addition); Nan, Thailand; Neuquén, Argentina; Oio, Guinea-Bissau; Oruro, Bolivia; and Oyo, Nigeria.

Q. What statoids come first and last in alphabetical order?

A.

First	Last
Aakkar, Lebanon	Zrnovci, Macedonia
A`ana, Samoa	Zug, Switzerland
Aargau, Switzerland	Zuid-Holland, Netherlands
Aberdeen, United Kingdom	Zulia, Venezuela
Aberdeenshire, United Kingdom	Zurich, Switzerland

 

Q. What is the most common name for a statoid?

A. Currently there are thirteen named Central. They are in Bahrain, Botswana, Fiji, Ghana, Kenya, Maldives, Malta, Nepal, Oman, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Solomon Islands, Togo, and Zambia. The runner-up is Western, with eleven occurrences: American Samoa, Egypt, Fiji, Ghana, Kenya, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, and Zambia. Note that this counts the English form of the names; the local name may be the equivalent in another language. Excluding compass points, the most common names are Saint Andrew and Saint John, with six each. If San Juan is merged with Saint John, the total goes up to nine, but it’s tied with the total for Saint Peter, Saint-Pierre, and San Pedro. Excluding compass points and saints’ names, the most common name is Amazonas, with four occurrences.

Q. How about capitals? What is the most common capital name?

A. First, bear in mind that the same city can be the capital, or administrative center, of more than one statoid. In cases like that, I only count unique cities. There are three statoids capitals with each of these names: Georgetown, Hamilton, Kingston, La Paz, Mérida, Saint-Pierre, San Fernando, Trujillo, and Victoria.

If you want to split hairs, though, there are quite a few cities, especially in Latin America, that have an informal and a formal name. One of them is San Fernando de Apure, Venezuela. I didn't count it as a match, because I was using only formal names. If you use its informal name, that makes four San Fernandos. But that opens still more possibilities. For example, there are six capitals starting with Santiago, but three of them are listed without an informal name: Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Cuba, and Santiago del Estero. Nevertheless, I feel sure that many local people save a few syllables by calling them simply "Santiago".

Q. Are there any cases where two adjacent statoids in different countries have the same name?

A. Yes, several. Amazonas in Brazil borders on both Amazonas, Colombia, and Amazonas, Venezuela. There are neighboring Limburgs in Belgium and Netherlands. In several cases, this situation occurs because a state has been partitioned (e.g. Punjab, India/Pakistan; Kangwon-do, North and South Korea).

Q. Are there any names – call them X and Y – such that city X is the capital of statoid Y and city Y is the capital of statoid X?

A. Not quite. However, in Honduras, the capital of Gracias a Dios department is Puerto Lempira, while the capital of Lempira department is Gracias.

Q. Does a statoid ever have the same name as its country?

A. Yes. Belize, Djibouti, Guatemala, Luxembourg, México, and San Marino are good examples. Of course, there are also the trivial cases where a country only has one statoid.

Q. Are there any cases where a statoid has the same name as a neighboring country?

A. Yes. Luxembourg province in Belgium is adjacent to Luxembourg. Zaire province in Angola is adjacent to the country that was called Zaire from 1971 to 1997.

Q. Is a statoid's capital ever located outside of the statoid itself?

A. Yes, occasionally. The capital of Surrey in England is Kingston upon Thames. It used to be in Surrey, but Greater London expanded and swallowed it up. Nevertheless, it's still the capital of Surrey.

Q. Are there any cases where a single city is the capital of more than one statoid?

A. Yes, quite a few. The foremost example is in Norway, where Oslo is the capital of Akershus and Oslo counties. Similarly, Saint Petersburg, Russia is the capital of Saint Petersburg federal city as well as Leningrad oblast'. There are many other such cases, where the metropolitan area of a city is politically separate from its hinterland. Port Louis is the capital of its own district, and the administrative center for three dependent island groups, in Mauritius. More impressively, Chandigarh is the capital of Chandigarh union territory, Haryana state, and Punjab state in India. Of course, these provide additional examples of capitals situated outside of their statoids.

Q. Does any country have two statoids whose capitals have the same name, but are not the same city?

A. The capitals of La Union and Pampanga provinces in the Philippines are two different cities named San Fernando.

Q. Are there any countries whose statoids' names all start with the same letter, other than the trivial case of a country with only one statoid in it?

A. Yes. In the Caribbean, where there are many statoids named after saints, all of the statoids in Dominica (10), Montserrat (3), and the U.S. Virgin Islands (3) start with Saint, hence with 'S'. The same has been true of Reunion, in the Indian Ocean, since the Îles Éparses were taken from it. Until fairly recently, Zimbabwe had eight provinces, all starting with 'M'.

Q. Are there any cities in more than one statoid?

A. They are few and far between. In many countries, the laws regarding municipalities prohibit this. Caracas, Venezuela is the largest such city I know of; it's about half and half in Distrito Capital and Miranda. Lloydminster, Alberta/Saskatchewan claims to be the only border city in Canada, although Flin Flon, Manitoba/Saskatchewan would seem to qualify too (see Flin Flon Extension of Boundaries Act ). In the United States, Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri are separate but adjacent cities in neighboring states. Bristol, Tennessee/Virginia and Texarkana, Arkansas/Texas are two more pairs of twin cities, like the two Kansas Cities. In France, Seyssel is divided between the departments of Ain and Haute-Savoie, but it consists of two communes, one in each department.

I can't mention Flin Flon without telling how it got its name. In about 1914, a group of prospectors found a cast-off dime novel titled "The Sunless City", by J. E. Preston-Muddock. It was a tale of an explorer who discovered a city of gold, engulfed in a bottomless lake. When the prospectors later discovered a deposit of copper-zinc ore near a deep lake, they named their claim "Flin Flon" after the fictional explorer, Josiah Flintabbatey Flonatin.

Q. How many types of statoid are there?

A. The answer is rather arbitrary, because it depends on how you translate words like oblast' into English. As of 2014-01-11, my spreadsheet lists 4,199 primary subdivisions of countries. It has 106 distinct types. The most common is "province," of which there are 893. "District" comes in second with 596 instances, followed by "region" with 514, "state" with 302, "department" with 276, "county" with 267, and "municipality" with 240. Districts and municipalities are usually secondary divisions or lower, but in small countries there may not be any secondary subdivisions.

Since provinces are almost three times as common as states, it would have been more logical to call primary subdivisions "province-oids" than "statoids." However, I find "province-oids" ugly to write and unpleasant to utter. I'll stick with "statoids."