Latvia

Home> Countries> Europe> Latvia

Country Name

Latvia, and officially known as the Republic of Latvia.

Location

Latvia is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe.

It is bordered by Estonia to the north, Lithuania to the south, Russia to the east, and Belarus to the southeast, and shares a maritime border with Sweden to the west.

Capital

Riga.

Reason for Naming

The name Latvija is derived from the name of the ancient Latgalians, one of four Indo-European Baltic tribes (along with Couronians, Selonians, and Semigallians), which formed the ethnic core of modern Latvians together with the Finnic Livonians.

Henry of Latvia invented the latinisations of the country's name, "Lettigallia" and "Lethia", both derived from the Latgalians. The terms inspired the variations on the country's name in Romance languages from "Letonia" and in several Germanic languages from "Lettland".

Flag

The flag of Latvia was adopted on 18 November 1918. The current Flag of Latvia was readopted on 27 February 1990.

The flag of Latvia consists of three horizontal stripes wider crimson

stripes are located at the top and at the bottom and a narrower white one is

in-between.