Brigadier General James Monroe Williams

A peninsula (Latin: paeninsula from paene "almost" and insula "island") is a piece of land that is bordered mostly by water but connected to mainland.[1][2][3][4] The surrounding water is usually understood to be continuous, though not necessarily named as such. A peninsula can also be a headland, cape, island promontory, bill, point, or spit.[5] A point is generally considered a tapering piece of land projecting into a body of water that is less prominent than a cape.[6] In English, the plural of peninsula is peninsulas or, less commonly, peninsulae. A river which courses through a very tight meander is also sometimes said to form a "peninsula" within the (almost closed) loop of water.

Presented below is a list of peninsulas.

Africa

The Horn of Africa also known as the Somali peninsula

Macaronesia

North Africa

Somali Peninsula

The Horn of Africa is a peninsula in Northeast Africa that juts into the Guardafui Channel, and is the easternmost projection of the African continent. It denotes the region containing the countries of Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia.

West Africa

Other peninsulas in Africa

Antarctica

Asia

Central Asia

Kazakhstan

Eastern Asia

China[7]

Hong Kong

Japan

Hokkaido
Honshū
Kyūshū

Korea

Korean Peninsula

The whole landmass encompassing North and South Korea is a peninsula, surrounded by the East Sea to the east and south, and the Yellow Sea to the west and south, with the Korea Strait connecting them.

Macau

Taiwan

Northern Asia

The Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East

South-eastern Asia

Indochina

Indonesia

Malaysia

Philippines

Singapore

Vietnam

Southern Asia

South India (Peninsular India)

The Deccan Peninsula is a dominant geographical feature of the Indian Subcontinent.

Other peninsulas on the Indian Subcontinent include:

Western Asia

Arabia

Eastern Mediterranean

Turkey

Map of the Anatolian Peninsula, the Asian part of Turkey

Europe

Europe is sometimes considered to be a large peninsula extending off Eurasia.[8] As such, it is one of the largest peninsulas in the world and the only one to have the status as a full continent, largely as a matter of convention rather than science. It is composed of many smaller peninsulas, the four main and largest component peninsulas being the Scandinavian, Iberian, Balkan, and Apennine peninsulas.

Balkan Peninsula

The Balkan Peninsula, as defined by the SočaVipavaKrkaSavaDanube border.

The Balkans is a peninsula including Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia and the European part of Turkey.

France

Iberian Peninsula

Satellite view of the Iberian Peninsula

Encompassing continental Portugal and Spain, Andorra, Gibraltar (British Overseas Territory), and a small amount of Southern France, the Iberian Peninsula is a dominant geographical feature of Iberia.

Other peninsulas in Iberia include:

Ireland

Italy

Satellite view of the Apennine Peninsula

The Apennine Peninsula is a dominant geographical feature of Italy.

Other peninsulas in Italy include:

Adriatic Sea
Ionian Sea
Ligurian Sea
Tyrrhenian Sea

Malta

Russia

Scandinavia

Fennoscandia including the Scandinavian Peninsula and Kola Peninsula

Norway

Sweden

Denmark

Finland

Estonia

Turkey

Ukraine

United Kingdom and the Crown Dependencies

England

England's South West Peninsula at the top and France's Brittany Peninsula at the bottom, with the English Channel between

Northern Ireland

Scotland

Wales

Channel Islands

Isle of Man

Other peninsulas in Europe

A small peninsula in Croatia
Au Peninsula, Lake Zürich, Switzerland

North America

Belize

Canada

British Columbia

New Brunswick

Newfoundland and Labrador

Northwest Territories

Nova Scotia

Nunavut

Baffin Island

Ontario

Quebec

Caribbean

Haiti

Dominican Republic

Puerto Rico

Cuba

Saint Lucia

Costa Rica

Greenland

Mexico

The Yucatán Peninsula

Panama

United States

Alaska

California

Florida

The Floridian Peninsula, shown by a NASA satellite image

Florida is a well-known example of a large peninsula, with its land area divided between the larger Florida peninsula and the smaller Florida Panhandle on the north and west. It has several smaller peninsulas within it:

Maryland

Mid-Atlantic shoreline showing, from the upper right, the Cape May Peninsula of New Jersey, Delaware Bay, the Delmarva Peninsula, and Chesapeake Bay. Also visible are the peninsulas of Maryland and Virginia along the Chesapeake's shores.

Massachusetts

Cape Cod, a peninsula of Massachusetts

Michigan

The large Michigan Peninsulas from space, showing both the Upper Peninsula and Lower Peninsula

New Jersey

New York

Long Island, New York, with its North and South Forks
  • Irondequoit, NY (geographical headland)

Oregon

Utah

  • Antelope Island, Utah, becomes a peninsula when waters are low, on the south shore of the Great Salt Lake
  • Promontory Peninsula, on the north eastern shore of the Great Salt Lake
  • Stansbury Peninsula becomes an island when waters are high, on the south shore of the Great Salt Lake

Vermont

  • Alburgh, Vermont, is on the Alburgh Tongue, a peninsula extending from Quebec, Canada into Lake Champlain

Virginia

Washington

Wisconsin

Other states

Oceania

Australia

Satellite image of Wilsons Promontory, Victoria
Palm Beach, Sydney, New South Wales
Torndirrup Peninsula, Western Australia

New Zealand

North Island

South Island

NASA satellite photo of the Otago Peninsula and Otago Harbour. The city of Dunedin is located at the isthmus at lower left.

Outlying Islands

Papua New Guinea

Hawaii

South America

Satellite images of the Southern Cone extending off South America month by month

Southern Cone

The Southern Cone, like Europe, is sometimes considered to be a large peninsula.[9] Geographically, the peninsula encompasses most of Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Southern Brazil and the southernmost portion of Paraguay, which makes it one of the largest peninsulas in the world. Like the Indian Peninsula, the Southern Cone is sometimes considered to be a subcontinent.[10]

Other peninsulas in South America

Fictional peninsulas

Map of Brobdingnag (original map, Pt II, Gulliver's Travels

See also

References

  1. ^ Word Histories and Mysteries: From Abracadabra to Zeus. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2004. p. 216. ISBN 978-0-547-35027-1. OCLC 55746553.
  2. ^ "pen·in·su·la". American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2016. Retrieved 1 May 2016.
  3. ^ "Definition of peninsula". Cambridge Dictionaries Online. Cambridge University Press. Retrieved 1 May 2016.
  4. ^ "Definition of peninsula". Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 1 May 2016.
  5. ^ "List of peninsulas". Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. 2016. Retrieved 1 May 2016.
  6. ^ "Fourah Point / Fourah Point, Northern, Sierra Leone, Africa". travelingluck.com.
  7. ^ "中国一共有几个半岛-爱问知识人". iask.sina.com.cn. Retrieved 21 April 2022.
  8. ^ National Geographic, ed. (1996). "Peninsula". Archived from the original on 5 October 2012. Retrieved 18 January 2015.
  9. ^ Podetti, J. Ramiro (2011). "La visión geopolítica de Artigas": 3. Retrieved 10 November 2020. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  10. ^ Baldwin, James A. (2014), "Continents", in R.W. McColl (ed.), Encyclopedia of World Geography, Infobase Publishing, p. 215, ISBN 978-0-8160-7229-3

External links

  • The dictionary definition of peninsula at Wiktionary
  • Media related to Peninsulas at Wikimedia Commons