Random European Country Generator

How this European country picker works

Press the button, get a country in Europe. That is the job and it takes one click.

Your browser picks at random and sends nothing anywhere. Turn up the Number box for several at once, no repeats. Copy puts the result on your clipboard.

Three filters narrow things first:

• Starts with: one letter, matched against the first character.
• Contains: any string, matched anywhere in the name.
• Ends with: one letter, matched against the last character.

How many countries are in Europe? You will see 44, 46, 50 and 51, depending on who is counting. The spread is not sloppiness, and it is genuinely worth knowing, because it goes back three hundred years to one Swedish officer in a Siberian prison camp.

Europe's eastern border was drawn by a prisoner of war

Every continent except one has an obvious shape. You can see where Africa stops. You can see where Australia stops. Europe has an Atlantic coast on one side and, on the other, a flat open plain that runs without interruption to the Pacific.

So where does Europe end? For most of recorded history the answer was the River Don, which cuts through the heart of what is now Russia. That was the line the Greeks used, then the Romans, then everybody else, for about two thousand years.

Then came Philip Johan von Strahlenberg. He was a Swedish army officer, captured by the Russians and held as a prisoner of war in Siberia for over a decade. He used the time to study the country he was stuck in.

His new line ran down the peaks of the Ural Mountains, then south to the Caspian Sea, then west to the Black Sea. He published it in 1730. Vasily Tatishchev, the Russian geographer, said he had suggested it first.

Within a century most European atlases had adopted it. We are still using it today.

The line kept moving after he died

Strahlenberg's original line ran along the Emba River to reach the Caspian. Over the next hundred years the Ural River won out instead, so the southern end of the border shifted.

Then in 1958 the Geographical Society of the Soviet Union revised the stretch between the Urals and the Caspian and adopted the result for its school textbooks. That is roughly the version taught today.

So the border between Europe and Asia has been redrawn at least three times since it was invented, by three different sets of people, for three different reasons. It is a decision, not a discovery.

Which is where the missing countries live. Russia, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Cyprus all sit on or near the line. Count them in and you get 51. Count them out and you get 44. Everybody quoting you a number is telling you where they drew Strahlenberg's line, whether they know it or not.

Europe is not really a continent

Here is the uncomfortable bit, and geologists have been saying it for a long time.

Continents sit on tectonic plates. Europe does not have one. It shares a plate with Asia, and there is no geological seam running down the Urals, no place where one landmass ends and another begins. The mountains are old and worn and entirely interior.

Which is why many geologists simply say Eurasia and move on. By that reckoning Europe is a peninsula, in the same way that Iberia is a peninsula, and calling it a continent is a habit inherited from ancient Greek sailors who could see the Aegean and not much else.

None of which stops Europe from being an extremely useful idea. It just means it is a cultural object rather than a geological one. So is the list your school gave you.

Europe holds six of the world's smallest countries

For a continent so hard to define, Europe is remarkably crowded with countries, and an unusual share of them are tiny.

• Vatican City, a walled enclave inside Rome, and the smallest country in the world by both area and population.
• Monaco, smaller than many airports, and the most densely populated country on Earth.
• San Marino, entirely surrounded by Italy, and one of the oldest surviving republics anywhere.
• Liechtenstein, wedged between Switzerland and Austria, and one of only two doubly landlocked countries in the world. To reach the sea you must cross two borders.
• Malta, an island nation in the middle of the Mediterranean.
• Andorra, high in the Pyrenees between France and Spain.

Generate a European country at random and there is a decent chance you land somewhere you could walk across in an afternoon.

Ten more, for balance: Belarus, Croatia, Estonia, Iceland, Latvia, Moldova, Montenegro, Norway, Slovenia, Ukraine.

Ways people actually use this

• Geography quizzes. Ask for European countries and everybody names the big six. Generate five and somebody has to think about Moldova.
• Trip planning by dartboard. Europe is small, well connected, and cheap to move around. Generating one is a legitimate way to pick a weekend.
• Language practice. Far more languages than countries. Generate a country, learn how to say thank you.
• Football and Eurovision arguments. Both competitions include countries that most maps would not obviously call European. Now you know why.
• Teaching that borders are decisions. Generate Kazakhstan on a European countries tool and let the class ask you why.

Getting more out of the filters

• Type land into Contains and you get Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Netherlands, Poland and Switzerland. Netherlands is the one everybody forgets.
• Set Starts with to M for Malta, Moldova, Monaco and Montenegro. Two of them are microstates.
• Ends with A is the most productive filter here by a wide margin, which is a leftover of Latin grammar rather than a coincidence.
• If a filter returns fewer countries than you asked for, there are not that many matches. Loosen it and run it again.

Questions people ask

How many countries are there in Europe?

Between 44 and 51, depending on how you treat the countries that straddle the eastern border. Almost the entire gap is made up of Russia, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Cyprus. Nobody quoting you a different number is wrong. They are answering a slightly different question.

Is Russia in Europe?

Partly. Most of Russia's land lies east of the Urals, which puts it in Asia, but most of its people, its capital and three centuries of convention put it in Europe. It is one of the countries that makes the count ambiguous.

Why are the Ural Mountains the border?

Because a Swedish prisoner of war suggested it in 1730 and the idea caught on. There is no geological boundary there. The Urals were chosen because they were long, continuous, and easy to draw on a map.

Which is the smallest country in Europe?

Vatican City, which is also the smallest country in the world. It fits inside the city of Rome.

Can I get the same country twice?

Not in one press. Ask for eight and you get eight different countries. Press Generate again and everything is back in the pot.

References

1. Philip Johan von Strahlenberg
2. United Nations member states
3. Standard country or area codes, UN M49