Ivory Coast document photos online

In April 1986 Ivory Coast did something almost no other nation has dared: it told the world to stop translating its name. By government decree, the country must be called Cote d'Ivoire in every language, on every passport, treaty and diplomatic letter, with no English "Ivory Coast," no Spanish "Costa de Marfil." That single ruling is why the name printed inside the navy biometric passport, and on the front of every official document, stays stubbornly French no matter who is reading it, a rare case where a country has effectively trademarked its own identity across all the planet's documents.

• Official name Since a 1986 decree, Cote d'Ivoire refuses to let its name be translated, so the same French wording appears on its passport in every country on Earth.
• Passport power The Ivorian biometric passport opens about 55 destinations visa-free or visa-on-arrival, placing it around 77th on the Henley Passport Index, mid-pack for West Africa.
• Currency Its money, the West African CFA franc (code XOF), is locked to the euro at exactly 655.957 francs per euro, a rate that has not moved since 1999.
• Phantom coin The CFA franc is officially split into 100 centimes, yet in its entire history not a single centime coin or note has ever been printed.
• Citizenship Cote d'Ivoire has one of Africa's most-amended nationality laws, and a 1972 tightening left hundreds of thousands of long-settled families effectively stateless, with descent documents deciding who counted as Ivorian.
• Two capitals The official capital moved to Yamoussoukro in 1983, but Abidjan still hosts the government and embassies, so travel paperwork and documents often point to two different cities at once.
• World record Yamoussoukro holds the Guinness record for the largest church on Earth, the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace, built to quietly outsize St. Peter's in Rome.
• Cocoa giant Roughly 45% of all the world's cocoa is grown here, making Ivory Coast the planet's biggest chocolate-source nation.
• Name origin The country is literally named after a document of trade, the ivory exported by Portuguese sailors who called the shore Costa do Marfim, and the forest elephant still crowns its coat of arms.