Countries That End in “land”: The Full List of 7

TLDR

Seven sovereign countries end in “land”: Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Poland, Switzerland, Thailand and New Zealand. Add the Netherlands if you accept the plural “lands” and you get eight. Anything else you’ve seen on a list (Marshall Islands, Solomon Islands, Swaziland) is either a different ending or a name that no longer exists.

Table of Contents

• The 7 countries that end in “land”
• The counting rule
• Edge cases: the names that break lists
• Places that end in “land” but aren’t countries
• Why so many country names end in “land”
• FAQ
• Self-test quiz

The 7 countries that end in “land”

These are the UN-recognized sovereign states whose English name ends in the letters l-a-n-d. The United Nations member list confirms all seven.

Country	Continent	Capital	One-line fact
Finland	Europe	Helsinki	Its Finnish name is Suomi, so “Finland” is an outsider’s label.
Iceland	Europe	Reykjavik	The name comes from Old Norse Ísland, “ice land”.
Ireland	Europe	Dublin	The Irish name is Éire; “Ireland” blends it with the Germanic “land”.
Poland	Europe	Warsaw	In Polish it’s Polska, with no “land” anywhere. English added the suffix.
Switzerland	Europe	Bern	Named after the canton of Schwyz. Bern, not Zurich or Geneva, is the capital.
Thailand	Asia	Bangkok	Called Siam in English until 1939, and again briefly from 1945 to 1949.
New Zealand	Oceania	Wellington	Named by Dutch mapmakers after the province of Zeeland.

Five are in Europe, one in Asia, one in Oceania. Africa, North America and South America have none.

The counting rule

The rule is simple: the country must be a sovereign state, and its common English name must end in the exact string “land”. Under that rule the answer is seven.

That rule is why other lists disagree. Some count by looser rules, such as “contains land” or “ends in lands”. Know which rule a list uses and the disagreements make sense.

Edge cases: the names that break lists

The Netherlands. It ends in “lands”, not “land”. Strict counters leave it out. Plenty of quiz sites include it, which gives eight. Both counts are defensible as long as you state the rule. The name literally means “low countries”, and the CIA World Factbook lists it as the Netherlands, with Holland only as a common nickname for two of its provinces.

Eswatini (formerly Swaziland). King Mswati III renamed the country in April 2018, on the 50th anniversary of its independence from Britain. Swaziland ended in “land”; Eswatini does not. Old lists still carry it, and so do older atlases. It doesn’t count today.

Marshall Islands and Solomon Islands. Both end in “Islands”. They contain no “land” at the end. They only show up on lists because “Island” and “land” look similar at a glance. Leave them out.

Deutschland. This is Germany’s name in German. It ends in “land”, but it’s a foreign-language name, so it fails the English-name rule. The same goes for Nederland, the Dutch name for the Netherlands.

Somaliland. It declared independence from Somalia in 1991 and runs its own government, currency and elections, but no UN member state formally treats it as a country in the same sense as the seven above. By the sovereign-state rule, it’s out.

Thailand’s translation. “Thai” means “free” in the Thai language, so Thailand is often glossed as “land of the free”. The name is an English construction: Thais say Prathet Thai.

Places that end in “land” but aren’t countries

People searching this topic often want these too. None are sovereign states, so they’re not in the count of seven.

• England, Scotland and Northern Ireland are constituent countries or provinces of the United Kingdom. They compete separately in football, which is why they get mistaken for independent states.
• Greenland is an autonomous territory of Denmark, with its own parliament and control over most domestic affairs.
• Åland is an autonomous, Swedish-speaking island region of Finland.
• Newfoundland is part of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It was a separate dominion until 1949.
• Basutoland and Bechuanaland were British colonies. They became Lesotho and Botswana at independence in 1966.

Why so many country names end in “land”

The suffix is old. Proto-Germanic had a word, landą, meaning ground or territory, and it survives in English, German, Dutch and the Scandinavian languages. Old English had “land” meaning country long before the countries below were named in English. Other endings get the same treatment: all 39 countries that end in “ia” are listed separately.

The pattern follows language, not geography:

• Germanic names for Germanic places. Iceland and Ireland carry the suffix from Old Norse and Old English forms (Ísland, Īrland). Finland, Switzerland and the Netherlands come from Germanic-language naming of neighbours.
• English adding “land” to foreign names. Poland is the clearest case. The Polish name is Polska; English attached its own suffix to the stem. Thailand works the same way, and it’s a modern coinage: the country adopted the name in 1939.
• Dutch cartography. New Zealand came from Abel Tasman’s 1642 voyage, which the Dutch named Nieuw Zeeland after Zeeland province.

So the cluster is mostly an English-speaker habit applied to northern European places, plus two later cases (Thailand and New Zealand) that followed the same template.

FAQ

How many countries end in “land”? Seven, by the strict rule. Eight if you accept “Netherlands”.

Does Swaziland still count? No. It became Eswatini in 2018.

Do any countries end in “lands”? Only the Netherlands. The Marshall Islands and Solomon Islands end in “Islands”, which is a different suffix.

Is Greenland a country that ends in “land”? It ends in “land” but isn’t sovereign. It’s an autonomous territory of Denmark.

Is Scotland a country that ends in “land”? It’s a country within the United Kingdom, but not a sovereign state. Quizzes that ask for countries usually mean UN members, so Scotland and England are out.

Which continent has the most? Europe, with five of the seven.

Self-test quiz

Cover the answers below and try these.

1. Which “land” country has Bangkok as its capital?
2. Which one uses Bern as its capital, and not Zurich?
3. Which “land” country is named after a Dutch province?
4. Which country dropped its “land” name in 2018?
5. Which “land” country has a name that is Polska in its own language?

Answers: 1. Thailand. 2. Switzerland. 3. New Zealand. 4. Eswatini, formerly Swaziland. 5. Poland.