# Do any countries have geographical centres outside their borders? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 15, 2019, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-have-geographical-centres-outside-their-borders/837127 "2019-07-15T13:47:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2019, 9:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-have-geographical-centres-outside-their-borders/837127/41 "2019-07-21T09:14:27Z")
(nm, missed something) ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2019, 10:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-have-geographical-centres-outside-their-borders/837127/42 "2019-07-21T10:34:53Z")
I ran this through a free GIS program and counted 4, all of which have been mentioned: [ul] [li]France (located in Spain)[/li][li]Israel (in Palestine… yeah, I know)[/li][li]Croatia (in Bosnia)[/li][li]Vietnam (in Laos)[/li][/ul] You can see an image of the map here: [![Imgur](https://i.imgur.com/4v8EYxA.png "Centroids Outside Their Countries, But On Land") ](https://imgur.com/4v8EYxA) Sorry, can’t seem to get the actual map to upload. Buggy cloud service. What I did: [ol] [li]Imported the countries as polygons[/li][li]Calculated the center-of-mass centroids for all countries[/li][li]Filtered out the ones that aren’t in their countries[/li][li]Filtered out the ones that aren’t in ANY country (in the water)[/li][/ol] (Source: [Natural Earth countries](https://www.naturalearthdata.com/downloads/50m-cultural-vectors/50m-admin-0-countries-2/)) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2019, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-have-geographical-centres-outside-their-borders/837127/43 "2019-07-21T12:08:43Z")
How did “metropolitan” come to mean “main contiguous part”? ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2019, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-have-geographical-centres-outside-their-borders/837127/44 "2019-07-21T12:13:30Z")
> [@Corry\_El](#): > > Earlier in thread it was implied (by saying Denmark’s centroid would be well out at sea) that Greenland is the same as metropolitan Denmark and that’s definitely not true. Although again Greenland is proportionally represent in the Danish parliament unlike US territories it is a ‘constituent country’ of the Kingdom of Denmark not a province and has lots of local political autonomy that subdivisions of metropolitan Denmark don’t. Also, complete independence is an active mainstream issue. I was _going_ to ask if you’d also consider Scotland to be questionable with regards to the UK, since the above is also true to a lesser or greater extent in Scotland, but then I noticed that the OP only mentions “country” without any sovereignty caveats, so Scotland is _definitely_ debatable with regards to the UK. Except that Great Britain and England are distinctly non-crescent shaped so are not candidates for this thread. ---
**Author:** ![MikeS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MikeS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MikeS)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2019, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-have-geographical-centres-outside-their-borders/837127/45 "2019-07-21T14:18:23Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > How did “metropolitan” come to mean “main contiguous part”? As far as I can tell, it goes back to the Greeks, where “metropolis” literally meant “mother city”. But cities & states were interchangeable, so it also effectively meant “mother country” in relation to a colony. I think. This is what I can piece together from the various entries for metropolis, metropole, metropolitan, etc. in the OED. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2019, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-have-geographical-centres-outside-their-borders/837127/46 "2019-07-21T15:30:22Z")
I’m going to guess that the [Federated States of Micronesia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federated_States_of_Micronesia) does. It consists of a lot of small islands over a large geographical area. That is 702 km[sup]2[/sup] of land distributed in 2,600,000 km[sup]2[/sup] of ocean. I’d be very surprised if it turned out the geographical centre was actually on an island. Other nation of multiple Islands probably count, too. Maybe Hawaii, back when it was an independent kingdom. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2019, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-have-geographical-centres-outside-their-borders/837127/47 "2019-07-21T16:07:32Z")
> [@psychonaut](#): > > Under this definition, are there any countries whose geographical centre lies on a point of land outside their borders? > [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > I’m going to guess that the Federated States of Micronesia does. It consists of a lot of small islands over a large geographical area. That is 702 km2 of land distributed in 2,600,000 km2 of ocean. > > I’d be very surprised if it turned out the geographical centre was actually on an island.Other nation of multiple Islands probably count, too. Maybe Hawaii, back when it was an independent kingdom. The OP ruled out centers that aren’t on land. Without that restriction, pretty much all island nations consisting of more than one island would have centers not on land. But in most cases the center will lie within their territorial waters, that is, within their borders. Here’s a map of the [territorial waters of Oceania](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Territorial_waters_Oceania.png). It looks like all centers will fall within a country’s territorial waters. A more interesting case is when a center that is not on land falls within the territorial waters of another country. As I mentioned above, Malaysia seems to be such a case, with it’s center in Indonesian waters. I don’t know if there are others. ---
**Author:** ![JWT\_Kottekoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3ec8ea/32.png) [@JWT\_Kottekoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JWT_Kottekoe)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2019, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-have-geographical-centres-outside-their-borders/837127/48 "2019-07-21T16:31:58Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > That sounds like the usual convention… My mistake, it is equivalent to the usual convention. The OP asked for the point with the minimum mean-squared distance from all other points. The centroid is usually defined as the arithmetic mean of all the points. I thought these were different, but on further reflection, it is possible to prove that the two are equivalent. This works in any number of dimensions, so you can apply it on the sphere or in the plane. On a mountainous sphere of course, the centroids may be below (or above) ground. ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2019, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-have-geographical-centres-outside-their-borders/837127/49 "2019-07-21T19:31:26Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > I ran this through a free GIS program and counted 4, all of which have been mentioned: > > [ul] > [li]France (located in Spain)[/li][li]Israel (in Palestine… yeah, I know)[/li][li]Croatia (in Bosnia)[/li][li]Vietnam (in Laos)[/li][/ul] Cool! Can you also do Somalia (including Somaliland and Puntland)? ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2019, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-have-geographical-centres-outside-their-borders/837127/50 "2019-07-21T20:06:48Z")
> [@MikeS](#): > > As far as I can tell, it goes back to the Greeks, where “metropolis” literally meant “mother city”. But cities & states were interchangeable, so it also effectively meant “mother country” in relation to a colony. The change from naming territories differently from their capital took place during the Middle Ages, partly because during that period quite a few “countries” had capitals that moved a lot (following the Court), rather than one place which stayed as the bureaucratic center regardless of where the monarch happened to be. The metropolitan territory is the one which contains the “metropolis” in the meaning of “capital city”, once these bureaucratic centers became fixed again. False friend warning: this usage doesn’t exist in every language that has “metropolis” in its dictionary; neither in Spanish nor in Portuguese is the original territory called that (I don’t know about Dutch, Italian, Danish…). ---
**Author:** ![Dana\_Scully](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5daacb/32.png) [@Dana\_Scully](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dana_Scully)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2019, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-have-geographical-centres-outside-their-borders/837127/51 "2019-07-21T20:17:32Z")
what is a centroid? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2019, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-have-geographical-centres-outside-their-borders/837127/52 "2019-07-21T23:51:20Z")
A centroid is just the technical term for the center, as we’re using it here. There’s more than one point which can be called the “center” of a complicated shape, but the centroid is most often the most useful one. Basically, if you were to cut the shape out of plywood, the centroid is the point where it would balance. > [@](#): > > Quoth **Colibri** : > > The OP ruled out centers that aren’t on land. Without that restriction, pretty much all island nations consisting of more than one island would have centers not on land. You probably want to add “more than one island of significant size”. There are several nations consisting of one decent-sized island together with a bunch of flyspecks that hardly matter. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-have-geographical-centres-outside-their-borders/837127.md?page=2)