South America — Geography & Quizzes
Explore all 12 countries of South America — capitals, flags, populations, and free quizzes.
South America by the numbers
South America has 12 countries, a combined population of about 437,232,783 — roughly 5.5% of everyone on Earth — across 17,739,576 square kilometres. That works out at 24.6 people per square kilometre against a world average of 59.4.
- Countries: 12
- Total population: ~437,232,783
- Total area: 17,739,576 km²
- Average density: 24.6 people per km²
- Most populous: Brazil (215,313,498)
- Largest by area: Brazil (8,515,767 km²)
- Most densely populated: Ecuador (63.5 per km²)
- Least densely populated: Guyana (3.8 per km²)
The biggest and the smallest
By population the five largest are Brazil (215,313,498), Colombia (51,874,024), Argentina (46,234,830), Peru (34,049,588) and Venezuela (28,301,696).
The smallest by population are Suriname (618,040), Guyana (808,726) and Uruguay (3,422,794) — and those are exactly the ones people forget when trying to name every country on the continent.
By land area the order is different: Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Colombia and Bolivia lead, while Suriname, Uruguay and Guyana are the smallest. Population and area rankings rarely agree, and noticing where they diverge is one of the fastest ways to build a real feel for a continent rather than a list of names.
Languages and currencies
The most widely used official languages here are Spanish (9 countries), Portuguese (1 country), English (1 country), Guaranà (1 country) and Dutch (1 country).
No two countries on this continent share a currency in this dataset — every one issues its own, which makes currency a reliable one-to-one clue.
Learn South America properly
Working one continent at a time beats shuffling the whole world, because your memory for places is spatial and neighbouring countries reinforce each other. For South America the three angles worth covering are the map, the flags and the capitals.
- South America map quiz — place each country on a blank map
- South America flags quiz — identify the flags
- South America capitals quiz — match countries to capital cities
Do all three for the same continent before moving on. Each one reinforces the other two, which is far more efficient than learning flags globally, then capitals globally, then the map globally.
Countries of South America
- Argentina 🇦🇷 — capital Buenos Aires
- Bolivia 🇧🇴 — capital Sucre
- Brazil 🇧🇷 — capital BrasÃlia
- Chile 🇨🇱 — capital Santiago
- Colombia 🇨🇴 — capital Bogotá
- Ecuador 🇪🇨 — capital Quito
- Guyana 🇬🇾 — capital Georgetown
- Paraguay 🇵🇾 — capital Asunción
- Peru 🇵🇪 — capital Lima
- Suriname 🇸🇷 — capital Paramaribo
- Uruguay 🇺🇾 — capital Montevideo
- Venezuela 🇻🇪 — capital Caracas