My comments above were referring to the axis alignment used in a projection transformation that takes 3D points wrapped about a sphere and maps them to a flat 2D plane.

Most of the common global world projections use conic projections that have a major axis aligned NS and conic slices that are orthogonal to the cone major axis mapped to latitude lines that are East-West.

There are many other types of projections, the older NZ map grid is an unusual one.

Once a projection is used to make a flat map, that map can be rotated about in any direction .. but that's another thing altogether.

You may, or not, enjoy looking through a free USGS projection reference of note:

Map projections: A working manual Synder (1987) https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/pp1395

The Plate 1 link is to a handy wall poster of a limited number of common projections: https://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/1395/plate-1.pdf