Capitals, Flags & Countries

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Canberra is a capital built out of a rivalry. When Australia federated in 1901, Sydney and Melbourne both wanted the honour so badly that the constitution brokered a truce: the capital had to sit in New South Wales but at least 100 miles from Sydney. A sheep-station district was chosen, an international design competition was won by American architect Walter Burley Griffin, and Parliament finally moved in come 1927. Sydney tempts as the biggest and most famous city, Melbourne actually served as the interim seat of government until 1927, and Brisbane is only the state capital of Queensland - none of them is the national capital.

Source: Britannica: Canberra; Australian Capital Territory (constitution section 125, 1927 transfer)

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Nepal's flag is two stacked triangular pennants - a 'double pennon' - making it the world's only non-rectangular national flag, and the only one taller than it is wide. The two pennants originally belonged to rival branches of the ruling dynasty and were joined into one banner, formally adopted in 1962; the crimson field echoes the rhododendron, Nepal's national flower. Switzerland is the tempting near-miss because its flag is square - unusual, but a square still has four right angles. Qatar's flag has a striking serrated edge between its white and maroon bands, yet the flag itself is an ordinary rectangle, and Bhutan's dragon flag is rectangular too.

Source: Britannica: flag of Nepal; CIA World Factbook: Nepal

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Ottawa was hand-picked by Queen Victoria in 1857, an obscure lumber town that had been known as Bytown until its 1855 renaming. Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City and Kingston were locked in such fierce competition to host the government that the choice was referred to the queen, who settled on Ottawa partly because it sat right on the boundary between English-speaking Canada West and French-speaking Canada East - a diplomatic middle ground - and was safely inland from the American border. Toronto lures answerers as Canada's largest city, Montreal was long its commercial metropolis and briefly a seat of government, and Vancouver is merely the Pacific coast's biggest city; none holds the capital title.

Source: Britannica: Ottawa (Queen Victoria's 1857 selection)

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Brasília is a capital conjured from empty savanna: on 21 April 1960 Brazil moved its government about 600 miles inland to a brand-new city, planned by Lúcio Costa with sweeping modernist buildings by Oscar Niemeyer, its street plan famously resembling an airplane. The idea of an interior capital had been floated since 1789 and was even written into the 1891 constitution, but construction only began in 1956 - the city went from scrub to seat of government in under four years. Rio de Janeiro is the classic trap, since it really was the capital until 1960; São Paulo is only Brazil's biggest city; and Salvador was the colonial capital, but that ended back in 1763.

Source: Britannica: Brasilia (1960 capital transfer, Costa/Niemeyer design)

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That is Japan's Hinomaru, the 'circle of the sun' - officially the Nisshoki, or 'sun-mark flag'. The red disc depicts the sun itself, a nod to Japan's ancient identity as the land of the rising sun, the country east of the Asian mainland where the day begins. Bangladesh is the cleverest trap: its flag also carries a red disc, but on a green field and set slightly off-centre so it looks centred when flying. South Korea's flag is white too, yet its centre holds the red-and-blue taegeuk swirl ringed by black trigrams, while Indonesia's flag has no disc at all - just two horizontal bands, red over white.

Source: Britannica: flag of Japan; flag of Bangladesh

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Tiny Liechtenstein is wedged between exactly two neighbours, Switzerland and Austria - and since neither of them touches the sea either, anyone leaving Liechtenstein for a beach must cross at least two international borders. The CIA World Factbook singles out Liechtenstein and Uzbekistan as the only two countries on Earth in this position; all five of Uzbekistan's neighbours are landlocked too. Switzerland and Austria feel right because they are famously landlocked Alpine states, but each borders countries with coastlines (Italy, France, Germany among them), so they are only singly landlocked. Nepal is likewise landlocked just once - its neighbour India has thousands of kilometres of coast.

Source: CIA World Factbook: Liechtenstein; Uzbekistan (geography notes)

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Bern - and the twist is that Switzerland technically has no official capital at all. When the modern federal state formed in 1848, the founders deliberately avoided crowning any city, so Bern carries only the modest title of 'federal city'. It won the role partly because giving the seat of government to Zurich, already the economic powerhouse, would have concentrated too much power in one place; Bern offered a central location, support from French-speaking cantons, and free land for the government buildings. Zurich misleads as the largest and richest Swiss city, Geneva as the famous host of international organisations, and Basel as the third major hub - but the parliament sits in Bern.

Source: Britannica: Bern; swissinfo.ch: Why is Bern the capital of Switzerland (1848 federal city decision)

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Denmark's Dannebrog - a white Nordic cross on red - holds the Guinness World Record as the oldest continuously used national flag. Danish legend says it fell from the sky during a battle in Estonia in 1219; that story is folklore, but the flag's documented use reaches back at least to the 1370s, when it appeared in the Gelre Armorial, and the current design was formally adopted in 1625. Austria tempts because its red-white-red bands also have medieval origins, but their use as a national flag was interrupted over the centuries. The United Kingdom's Union Jack reached its final form only in 1801, and Sweden's yellow cross on blue was itself modelled on the Danish original.

Source: Guinness World Records: oldest continuously used national flag; Britannica: flag of Denmark

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Paraguay's red-white-blue tricolour is unique among national flags: the front carries the national coat of arms - a golden star ringed by a wreath and the words 'República del Paraguay' - while the back carries an entirely different device, the treasury seal, showing a lion guarding a staff topped with a liberty cap above the motto 'Paz y justicia' ('Peace and justice'). The two-faced design was confirmed by Paraguay's first flag law in 1842, and every properly made flag must still be stitched with both emblems. Argentina and Uruguay both display a golden sun, but identically on both sides, and Bolivia's coat of arms likewise appears the same front and back.

Source: Britannica: flag of Paraguay (obverse arms vs. reverse treasury seal, 1842 flag law)

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Lesotho sits wholly inside South Africa: its 909-kilometre border forms one unbroken loop, so every road out leads into the same neighbour. Only three sovereign states on Earth are enclaved like this, and the other two - San Marino and Vatican City - are microstates on the Italian peninsula, which makes mountainous Lesotho by far the largest and the only one you could call a full-sized country. Eswatini is the sharpest trap, a small southern African kingdom nearly engulfed by South Africa - but it also borders Mozambique, breaking the loop. Bhutan is pinned between two giants, China and India, and Andorra likewise touches two countries, France and Spain.

Source: Britannica: Lesotho (enclave within South Africa); CIA World Factbook: Lesotho

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South Africa is the only country with three official capitals: Pretoria (executive, home to the government and foreign embassies), Cape Town (legislative, seat of Parliament), and Bloemfontein (judicial, seat of the Supreme Court of Appeal). This split dates to the 1910 Act of Union, when the four former British colonies could not agree on a single capital and divided the functions among their rival cities as a political compromise. Bolivia comes closest among the alternatives with two capitals — La Paz for the seat of government, Sucre for the judiciary — but that is only two seats, not three. The Netherlands likewise splits functions between two cities, with Amsterdam as the constitutional capital while The Hague houses the government, parliament, and courts. Sri Lanka's government sits in Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte while Colombo remains the commercial hub, again only two centres rather than three.

Source: Britannica: South Africa (Pretoria, Cape Town, Bloemfontein as administrative, legislative and judicial capitals); CIA World Factbook: South Africa

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Vatican City covers only about 44 hectares (0.44 square kilometres, roughly the footprint of 49 American football fields), making it the smallest internationally recognised sovereign state on Earth. It became fully independent in 1929 under the Lateran Treaty between the Holy See and Italy, after centuries in which the pope's territory had shrunk from the once-sprawling Papal States to nothing at all following Italian unification. Monaco is the classic runner-up in 'smallest country' trivia, but at roughly 2 square kilometres it is still more than four times the Vatican's size. San Marino, an ancient microstate perched in the Apennine mountains, covers about 61 square kilometres, and Nauru — the smallest island nation — is a comparatively vast 21 square kilometres.

Source: Britannica: Vatican City (area; 1929 Lateran Treaty); CIA World Factbook: Holy See (Vatican City)

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Cyprus's 1960 independence flag shows a copper-coloured silhouette of the island above two olive branches, on a plain white field — one of the very few national flags ever to depict the outline of its own territory. The copper tone is a nod to the island's name: the ancient Greek word for the island, tied to its copper deposits, passed into Latin as 'cuprum' and gave English the word 'copper', since Cyprus supplied much of the ancient Mediterranean's copper ore. Bermuda's flag instead carries a red field with a coat of arms showing a lion and a shipwreck, not a map. Bangladesh's flag is a plain red disc set on green, with no territorial outline at all, and Eswatini's flag bears a ceremonial shield and spears rather than a map.

Source: Britannica: flag of Cyprus; Oxford English Dictionary: etymology of 'copper'

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Mozambique's flag, adopted in 1983, carries a red triangle at the hoist bearing a gold star overlaid with three objects: an open book (education), a hoe (agriculture), and an AK-47 rifle with fixed bayonet (defence and the armed struggle that won independence from Portugal in 1975) — making it the only national flag on Earth to depict a piece of modern military hardware. Angola's flag uses a stylised machete crossed with a cogwheel beneath a star, evoking labour and struggle without showing any weapon. Guinea-Bissau's flag follows the Pan-African red, yellow, green and black pattern with a plain black star, and Zimbabwe's flag displays a soapstone bird carving (the Zimbabwe Bird) rather than any weapon.

Source: Britannica: flag of Mozambique

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Canada's red-and-white maple leaf flag, designed by historian George Stanley and based on the colours of the Royal Military College of Canada, was adopted on 15 February 1965 (a date still marked annually as National Flag of Canada Day) after Prime Minister Lester Pearson pushed through months of heated debate over whether to keep any trace of the Union Jack. Dozens of rival designs were tabled, including versions with three joined maple leaves or a beaver, before a single 11-point stylised leaf won out. Australia and New Zealand are the tempting traps because both still fly Union-Jack-in-the-canton ensigns essentially unchanged since the early 20th century, and South Africa, though it did redesign its flag, only did so in 1994, three decades later.

Source: Britannica: flag of Canada; Government of Canada: National Flag of Canada Day

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Ethiopia's red, gold and green tricolour is the wellspring of the Pan-African colour scheme, because Ethiopia was one of the only African nations never colonised by a European power (aside from a brief Italian occupation from 1936 to 1941), making its flag a ready-made symbol of Black sovereignty during the 20th-century wave of independence. When Ghana became the first sub-Saharan colony to gain independence in 1957, it deliberately chose red, gold and green for its own flag as a tribute to Ethiopia, and dozens of newly independent nations followed suit in the following decades. Ghana is the natural trap since it is the country most associated with popularising the colours, but it was the follower, not the source. Liberia's flag instead echoes the American Stars and Stripes with red-and-white stripes and a single star, and Nigeria's flag uses only green and white, with no red or yellow at all.

Source: Britannica: flag of Ethiopia; Britannica: flag of Ghana

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France spans twelve time zones once its overseas departments and territories are counted — from French Polynesia and Wallis and Futuna in the Pacific to Réunion in the Indian Ocean and the French Southern and Antarctic Lands — the most of any country on Earth, even though mainland France itself sits in a single zone. Russia is the classic near-miss: despite being the largest country by land area and widely assumed to be the record-holder, it uses eleven time zones, one fewer than France. The United States and the United Kingdom both hold overseas territories too, but theirs are clustered across fewer longitudes, so each covers noticeably fewer zones than either France or Russia.

Source: Britannica: France (overseas departments and territories); CIA World Factbook: France

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Brazil's flag shows a blue celestial globe crossed by a white band reading 'Ordem e Progresso' ('Order and Progress', a nod to French philosopher Auguste Comte's positivist motto), and the 27 stars scattered across that globe map the real night sky as it was officially recorded over Rio de Janeiro on the morning of 15 November 1889, the day the monarchy was overthrown and the republic proclaimed; each star also stands for one of today's 26 states plus the Federal District. The zodiac-signing and navigators' star-position stories are invented distractors with no basis in the flag's actual design history. The Southern Cross constellation genuinely does appear among the stars, but only once in its true position, not duplicated for each former captaincy.

Source: Britannica: flag of Brazil (celestial globe, 15 November 1889, positivist motto)

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Kiribati's 33 coral atolls are scattered so widely across the central Pacific that its territory straddles both the Equator (putting islands in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres) and the 180th meridian (putting islands on both sides of the Eastern and Western Hemispheres), making it the only sovereign state present in all four. To stop its own territory from technically spanning two different calendar dates, Kiribati redrew the International Date Line in 1995 so that it bulges far to the east around the country's Line Islands, letting the whole nation share one date — incidentally making those islands among the very first places on Earth to greet each new day. Ecuador (whose name literally means 'equator') and Indonesia both straddle the Equator too, and the Maldives sits close to it as well, but none of the three extends across the date line into both the eastern and western hemispheres.

Source: CIA World Factbook: Kiribati (geography notes); Britannica: Kiribati

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Naypyidaw ('abode of kings') was built essentially from empty scrubland starting in 2002 and became Myanmar's official capital when the government relocated there in November 2005, complete with twenty-lane highways and government buildings spread across a footprint several times the size of Yangon — yet for years it remained strikingly under-populated relative to its planned capacity of roughly a million residents, with some of its multi-lane boulevards nearly empty of traffic. Yangon (formerly Rangoon) is the obvious trap, since it served as capital for over a century and remains the country's largest city and commercial centre, but it lost the official title in 2005. Mandalay is Myanmar's historic second city and a former royal capital of the 19th-century Konbaung dynasty, and Bago was an earlier capital centuries before that, but neither is the seat of government today.

Source: Britannica: Naypyidaw; Britannica: Myanmar (2005 capital relocation)

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Nauru's government offices sit in the Yaren district, which functions as the de facto seat of government, housing the parliament and administrative buildings, but Yaren has never been granted any special legal status above Nauru's other thirteen districts, so the country has never designated an official capital by law - a rare case among the world's sovereign states. Tuvalu's seat of government is Funafuti, which is that country's officially named capital atoll, not an omission of one. Kiribati's capital is South Tarawa, again formally designated as such. Palau's capital, Ngerulmud, is likewise an officially designated seat of government, moved there from Koror in 2006, so all three of these are simply countries whose capitals are small or unfamiliar, not ones lacking a designated capital altogether.

Source: Britannica: Naoero (Nauru), government and capital section; corroborated by CIA World Factbook, Nauru entry

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Switzerland's white cross on red has been flown in a square format since the country formally adopted it in 1889, a shape rooted in the flag's origin as an army banner rather than a maritime ensign. Vatican City copied the square proportions when it adopted its own flag in 1929 after the Lateran Treaty created it as a sovereign state. Among the roughly 190-plus national flags that use standard rectangular ratios, these two remain the sole exceptions with equal width and height. San Marino, Monaco and Andorra are all small European states whose flags could plausibly be guessed here, but each uses an ordinary rectangular ratio (San Marino and Monaco both use a 3:4 ratio, Andorra a 7:10 ratio), so none of them shares Switzerland's square shape.

Source: Britannica: flag of Switzerland; flag of Vatican City (aspect ratio); corroborated by CIA World Factbook flag descriptions for both countries

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La Paz, Bolivia's seat of government, sprawls across a canyon in the Andean Altiplano at an elevation of roughly 3,640 metres (about 11,975 feet) at its centre, with some outlying districts climbing even higher, making it the highest capital city on Earth by a wide margin according to Guinness World Records and standard geographic references. Sucre is a tempting alternative because it is Bolivia's other capital, the country's constitutional and judicial seat, but Sucre itself sits lower, at around 2,810 metres. Quito, Ecuador's capital, is genuinely high, at about 2,850 metres, and is often cited among the world's highest capitals, but it remains well below La Paz. Thimphu, Bhutan's capital, sits at roughly 2,300 metres in the Himalayan foothills, high by world standards but again considerably lower than La Paz.

Source: Guinness World Records: highest capital; corroborated by Britannica: La Paz (elevation); CIA World Factbook, Bolivia entry

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China's borders touch fourteen separate sovereign neighbours, running from Afghanistan and Pakistan in the west round to Vietnam and Laos in the southeast, while Russia's borders touch a different set of fourteen, from Norway and Finland in the northwest round to North Korea in the east - the two largest countries by land area also turn out to be the most surrounded, tied at the top of the list. Brazil (ten land neighbours) and Germany (nine) each border many countries but fall well short of fourteen. Turkey (eight land neighbours) and Austria (also eight) both sit solidly in the middle of the world rankings, nowhere near the top. India (seven land neighbours) and Kazakhstan (five) are both large countries with several neighbours of their own, but neither comes close to the fourteen-neighbour tie held uniquely by China and Russia.

Source: Britannica: China and Russia (boundaries sections); corroborated by CIA World Factbook border-country listings for both countries

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San Marino's capital is simply called the City of San Marino (locally, Città), the historic hill town on Monte Titano where the republic's government and basilica sit, identical in name to the country itself, much as Kuwait City or Djibouti City echo their own countries' names. Because the capital sits on a steep, defensible peak with little room to grow, its population, just over 4,000, has long been overtaken by lower-lying towns: Serravalle, in the republic's northeast, is San Marino's most populous municipality and commercial hub. Borgo Maggiore is the second-largest settlement, sitting directly below the capital and linked to it by a cable car, while Dogana is a busy town on the Italian border - both real San Marino towns, but neither is the seat of government.

Source: Britannica: San Marino (city) and San Marino (republic) entries, capital and population comparison; corroborated by CIA World Factbook, San Marino entry

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Belize's coat of arms, adopted at independence in 1981 and carried on the flag ever since, depicts two woodcutters, one Mestizo, holding an axe, and one Afro-Belizean (Creole), holding a paddle, standing on either side of a shield bearing tools of the timber trade, beneath a mahogany tree and the motto "Sub Umbra Floreo" ("Under the Shade I Flourish"). The design honours the mahogany-logging industry that shaped the colony's economy and the communities who built it, and it makes Belize's flag the only one among the world's sovereign states to place human figures at the centre of its design rather than as an incidental or badge-sized detail. No Belizean flag imagery involves Mayan warriors defending a temple, a colonial governor and local chief signing a treaty, or a fisherman and farmer - those are plausible-sounding but invented scenes.

Source: Britannica: flag of Belize (coat of arms description); corroborated by the Government of Belize's official national symbols page

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The white Druk (Thunder Dragon) at the centre of Bhutan's flag grips a jewel in each of its four claws, a standard element of the design meant to represent the wealth and security of the Bhutanese people, while the dragon's snarling expression represents the strength of the male and female deities protecting the country. The flag is divided diagonally into a golden-yellow upper triangle, representing the king's secular authority, and an orange-red lower triangle, representing Buddhist spiritual tradition. Bhutan is unusual in being the only country whose national flag depicts a dragon at all, so no other nation's flag offers a comparable design to confuse this with. The sword, lotus flower, and thunderbolt are all plausible-sounding Bhutanese or Buddhist symbols, but none of them is what the dragon is actually shown clutching.

Source: Britannica: flag of Bhutan; corroborated by the Royal Government of Bhutan's description of national symbols

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Kazakhstan, stretching from the Caspian Sea in the west to the border of China in the east, covers about 2.72 million square kilometres without touching any ocean, making it comfortably the largest country on Earth with no direct sea access, and the ninth-largest country of any kind, landlocked or not. Mongolia is the world's second-largest landlocked country, at roughly 1.56 million square kilometres, a genuinely enormous nation in its own right but well short of Kazakhstan's total. Chad, about 1.28 million square kilometres, and Bolivia, about 1.1 million square kilometres, are both large landlocked countries that frequently appear on lists of the world's biggest nations, but each is less than half of Kazakhstan's area.

Source: Guinness World Records: largest landlocked country; corroborated by CIA World Factbook, Kazakhstan (area) entry

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Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, a suburb a few kilometres east of Colombo, was designated as the seat of Sri Lanka's parliament in 1982 to relieve congestion in the older colonial capital, and it now serves as the country's official administrative and legislative capital even though almost nobody outside Sri Lanka has heard of it. Colombo, meanwhile, remains the country's largest city, its main port, and its de facto commercial and executive capital, which is why outside references often casually call Colombo "the capital" even though that is not, strictly, its formal designation. Kandy is a historic hill city and former royal capital of the Kingdom of Kandy, famous for the Temple of the Tooth, but it has not been the national capital since Sri Lanka gained independence. Galle and Jaffna are both major historic port cities, in the south and north of the island respectively, but neither has ever served as the national capital.

Source: Britannica: Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte; Colombo entries; corroborated by CIA World Factbook, Sri Lanka entry (capital field)

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Both Chad and Romania fly a vertical tricolour of blue, yellow, and red, and the resemblance is close enough that Chad's government formally complained to the United Nations in 2004, asking for the matter to be addressed, though Romania declined to alter a flag tied to its 1848 revolutions and its 1989 anti-communist uprising, and the two countries have coexisted with near-identical flags ever since (experts note Chad's blue is marginally deeper than Romania's). The resemblance is coincidental: Chad's designers switched from the green of an earlier design, judged too close to Mali's flag, to blue, without any reference to Romania. Moldova's flag is also a blue-yellow-red vertical tricolour but carries a distinctive coat of arms in its centre stripe, immediately setting it apart. Bulgaria's flag uses white, green, and red in horizontal bands, and Andorra's uses blue, yellow, and red but with its own coat of arms centred on the yellow stripe - neither is a plain, uninterrupted match the way Chad and Romania are.

Source: Britannica: flag of Chad; flag of Romania; corroborated by contemporaneous reporting on Chad's 2004 UN protest as a documented historical event

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The Pan-Slavic colours trace back to Russia's own white-blue-red tricolour, which Peter the Great adopted around 1699 (reportedly inspired by the Dutch flag he studied during his travels) and formally decreed in 1705 as the flag for Russian merchant vessels sailing abroad. When delegates gathered at the Prague Slavic Congress in 1848, during that year's wave of European revolutions, they chose this same three-colour scheme as a shared symbol of Slavic unity and solidarity with Russia, and it subsequently spread into the flags of Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia and Czechia, usually rearranged into different stripe orders or combined with a national coat of arms. Serbia makes a tempting choice since its own flag is a horizontal red-blue-white tricolour using exactly these three colours, but Serbia adopted them at that same 1848 congress rather than originating them — it was a recipient of the palette, not its source. Poland's flag carries only white and red, with no blue band at all, so it cannot be the three-colour model being described here. The Czech Republic's flag only gained its blue triangle in 1920, decades after the Pan-Slavic colours were already established and while Czech lands were still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, making it another later adopter rather than the origin point.

Source: Britannica: 'Flag of Russia' (Peter the Great's 1699 tricolour, 1848 Pan-Slavic adoption)

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Indonesia's flag, adopted at independence in 1945, and Monaco's flag, formalised in its current simple two-band form in 1881, are both plain horizontal bicolours with an identical red stripe above a white stripe and no other markings, making them famous among vexillologists as a near-perfect match. The two differ only in their official proportions — Indonesia's flag is wider relative to its height, at roughly a 2:3 ratio, while Monaco's is comparatively taller and narrower, at roughly 4:5 — and in a slightly darker shade of red used on Monaco's flag. The resemblance is coincidental rather than historical: Monaco's colours descend from the red-and-white heraldic shield of its ruling Grimaldi family, with no connection to Indonesia's own colours, which draw on much older Southeast Asian traditions. San Marino's flag instead pairs white over light blue with a central coat of arms, Austria's flag is a three-band red-white-red design, and Poland's flag reverses the order to white over red — none of these share Indonesia's and Monaco's identical two-colour, two-band layout.

Source: Britannica: 'Flag of Indonesia' (2:3 ratio, resemblance to Monaco's flag); Britannica: 'Flag of Monaco' (coincidental resemblance); corroborated by vexillological sources for Monaco's 4:5 ratio and shade difference

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Monrovia — today the capital of Liberia — was founded by the American Colonization Society in 1822 under the original name Christopolis, then renamed Monrovia in 1824 in honour of James Monroe, who was serving as U.S. President at the time and had supported the Society's colonization project. Alongside Washington, D.C., it is one of only two national capitals in the world named after a U.S. president, and the only one located outside the United States itself. Thomas Jefferson is a plausible distractor since he too had voiced earlier support for resettling freed Black Americans in Africa, but he had left office in 1809, fifteen years before the city took its current name, so it could not have honoured him as the sitting president. John Quincy Adams succeeded Monroe in March 1825, after Monrovia had already been renamed, and Andrew Jackson did not take office until 1829, years after the naming, so neither held the presidency at the relevant moment.

Source: Britannica: 'Monrovia' (founded by the American Colonization Society, named for President James Monroe)

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On 19 April 2018, Eswatini's King Mswati III announced in a speech at a stadium in Manzini that the kingdom of Swaziland would permanently revert to its indigenous name, Eswatini, meaning 'place of the Swazi' in siSwati — a change later formalised by Legal Notice No. 80 of 2018, which directed that all references to Swaziland in law and international agreements be read as Eswatini. The king's stated reasons included shedding a name that blended the Swazi people's own name with English, a legacy of the British protectorate established over the territory in the late 19th century, and reducing international confusion with Switzerland. Lesotho is the obvious regional trap, since it is another small southern African kingdom bordering South Africa, but it has kept its own name since independence in 1966 and has never undergone this kind of rebranding. Botswana and Zimbabwe did shed colonial-era names — Bechuanaland and Rhodesia respectively — but both changes happened decades earlier, at the moment of independence in 1966 and 1980, rather than as a later rebranding of an already-independent, already-recognised state in 2018.

Source: CIA World Factbook: Eswatini (name changed from Swaziland in 2018)

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Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia's capital, sits roughly 1,300 to 1,350 metres above sea level on an open plateau far from any moderating ocean, giving it a harsh continental climate with a long, dry winter — January averages often near -20C, with lows dropping far below that — offset by only a brief, mild summer around 17C in July. That combination leaves its average annual temperature at or just below freezing, the only national capital where that holds true. Astana, Kazakhstan's capital, is the closest rival and is often cited as the world's second-coldest capital, but its own continental steppe climate still averages several degrees warmer across the year. Moscow endures cold, snowy winters that shape its reputation for harsh weather, but its milder summers pull its annual average well above freezing, into the mid-single digits Celsius. Reykjavik lies much farther north than any of these, yet the warming influence of the Gulf Stream's ocean currents keeps its annual average mild by comparison, nowhere near freezing despite Iceland's subarctic latitude.

Source: NASA Earth Observatory: Ulaanbaatar (plateau elevation, permafrost, continental climate); Britannica Kids: 'Ulaanbaatar' (seasonal temperature figures); corroborated by comparative capital-climate rankings