North America consists of four countries: the United States of America, Canada, Mexico and Greenland. Also there is a small self-governing territory of France, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, located near the south shore of the Canadian island of Newfoundland.

North America is a continent in the northern hemisphere, bordered on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the east by the North Atlantic Ocean, on the south by the Caribbean Sea, and on the west by the North Pacific Ocean. It covers an area of 9,355,000 square miles (24,230,000 square kilometers). In 2001 its population was estimated at 454,225,000. It is the third largest continent in area, after Asia and Africa, and is fourth in population after Asia, Africa, and Europe.

Both North and South America are named after Amerigo Vespucci, who was the first European to suggest that the Americas were not the East Indies, but a previously undiscovered (by Europeans) New World.

North America occupies the northern portion of the landmass generally referred to as the New World, the Western Hemisphere, the Americas, or simply America. North America's only land connection is to South America at the narrow Isthmus of Panama. (For geopolitical reasons, all of Panama – including the segment east of the Panama Canal in the isthmus – is often considered a part of North America alone.) According to some authorities, North America begins not at the Isthmus of Panama but at the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, with the intervening region called Central America and resting on the Caribbean Plate. Most, however, tend to see Central America as a region of North America, considering it too small to be a continent on its own. Greenland, although a part of North America geographically, is not considered to be part of the continent politically.

Plate tectonics recognizes the vast majority of North America as being the surface of the North American Plate. Part of California is known for being the edge of the Pacific Plate, with the two plates meeting along the San Andreas fault.