Countries That Start With Y

Sovereign country (1)

Exactly one sovereign UN member state has an English name beginning with Y: the Republic of Yemen. There are no current territories or dependencies starting with Y, but one notable historical entity does — noted in the footnote below.

Yemen sits on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, bordering Saudi Arabia to the north and Oman to the east, with coastlines along the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. The country is the product of a 1990 unification between two predecessor states, North Yemen and South Yemen.

Yemen

Sanaa · Middle East

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Territories and other entities

No current territories or dependencies start with the letter Y. One historical entity, Yugoslavia, formerly began with Y but no longer exists as a sovereign state — see the quick answer below for the successor states.

Related letter lookups

Browsing the alphabet is a popular way to teach geography. Try the neighbouring letters:

• Countries That Start With X — No sovereign nations begin with X in English.
• Countries That Start With Z — Two nations — Zambia and Zimbabwe.
• Countries That Start With O — Just one country — Oman, like Y.

Quick answer for skimmers

Q: How many countries start with Y?
A: One sovereign country — Yemen.

Q: What happened to Yugoslavia?
A: Yugoslavia dissolved in the early 1990s into several independent successor states: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, and (later) Kosovo. Each is now listed under its own letter.

Q: What is the difference between North Yemen and South Yemen?
A: North Yemen and South Yemen were separate countries from 1967 to 1990, then unified into the modern Republic of Yemen.

Country profiles mentioned in this post:

Yemen