Countries that couldn’t think of a name for their capital

Ten countries named their capital after themselves. Six added the word City, and four didn’t even do that.

Just added City

Mexico City, Guatemala City, Panama City, Kuwait City and Luxembourg City all took the country’s name and added City. Vatican City is slightly different, because the whole country is called Vatican City, so the capital and the country are the same place.

Didn’t even add City

Monaco, San Marino, Singapore and Djibouti have capitals with exactly the same name as the country. San Marino’s is officially the City of San Marino, but everyone calls it San Marino.

In fairness, some of them went the other way round. Mexico, Kuwait and Djibouti are all named after their capital city, which was there first. Kuwait means little fort, and Djibouti took its capital’s name when it became independent from France in 1977. Vatican City, Monaco and Singapore are city-states, where the capital is more or less the whole country, so there was nowhere else to name.

Nearly

A few came close. Guinea-Bissau’s capital is Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe’s is São Tomé, and Andorra’s is Andorra la Vella. Algeria and Algiers aren’t the same word, and neither are Tunisia and Tunis, so they’re not on the map.

For more of the same, see countries that renamed January after their president or European countries with land.

Sources: Wikipedia’s list of national capitals, the City of San Marino and the name of Mexico, and the UK government’s factfiles on Kuwait and Djibouti.

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