Around 20 countries, by their common English short names, start and end with the same letter. The letter A accounts for most of them, because a great many country names come through Latin, where region names routinely end in -a.
A … A
- Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria.
- Antigua and Barbuda — starts with A, ends with A.
- Also borderline: "Republic of…" long-form names change this, but on short names the A-list is the big one.
Other letters
- E … E: none among widely used short names (Eswatini ends in i).
- N: none cleanly — but note the pattern in longer names.
- R: none.
- S … S: Seychelles, Solomon Islands, South Sudan (ends in "n") — so really just Seychelles and Solomon Islands.
- K … K: none (Kiribati, Kuwait, Kenya, Kazakhstan all end elsewhere).
Why the letter A dominates
Latin formed place-names for territories with a feminine ending, usually -ia or -a: Gallia, Hispania, Germania, Italia, Britannia. Modern country names inherited that ending directly (Australia, Austria, Colombia, Indonesia, Nigeria, Tanzania) or through other European languages. Any of those that also happen to begin with A — Australia, Austria, Albania, Algeria, Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Andorra — lands on this list. No other letter has a comparable structural reason.
If you allow full official names
Using long-form names opens it up: "Commonwealth of Dominica" (no), "Kingdom of Denmark" (no), but "Central African Republic" does not, while some like "Republic of Cyprus" and "Republic of Kenya" don't either. The cleanest version of the trivia question uses the short English names, and then it is overwhelmingly an A-question.
If country-name trivia is your thing, this companion piece covers the extremes of length.
Longest and shortest country names →