'ISO 3166-1', as part of the ISO 3166 standard, provides codes for the names of countries and dependent territories, and is published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The official name of the standard is ''Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions – Part 1: Country codes''. It defines three sets of country codes:[1]
★ ISO 3166-1 alpha-2, a two-letter system, used in many applications, most prominently for country code top-level domains (ccTLDs), with some exceptions.
★ ISO 3166-1 alpha-3, a three-letter system, which allows a better visual association between country name and code element than the alpha-2 code.
★ ISO 3166-1 numeric, a three-digit numerical system, with the advantage of script (writing system) independence, and hence useful for people or systems which uses a non-Latin script. This is identical to codes defined by the United Nations Statistics Division.
ISO 3166 has included alphabetical country codes since its first edition in 1974, and numeric country codes since its second edition in 1981. The country codes were first published as ISO 3166-1 in 1997 in the fifth edition of ISO 3166, when ISO 3166 were divided into three separate parts.
[2]
ISO 3166-1 is not the only standard for country codes. Many international organizations use their own country codes, where some of them closely correspond to the ISO 3166-1 codes. For examples, see ''
country codes''.
Criteria for inclusion
Currently, 244 countries and territories are assigned official codes by ISO 3166-1. According to the Maintenance Agency for ISO 3166 country codes, the only way to enter a new country name into ISO 3166-1 is to have it registered in one of the following two sources:
[3]
★
United Nations Terminology Bulletin Country Names, or
★
Country and Region Codes for Statistical Use of the UN Statistics Division.
To be listed in the bulletin ''Country Names'', a country or territory must be any of the following:
★ a
member country of the United Nations,
★ a member of one of its
specialized agencies, or
★ a party to the ''Statute of the
International Court of Justice''.
Once a country name or territory name appears in either of these two sources, it will be added to ISO 3166-1 by default.
Officially assigned code elements
The following is a complete ISO 3166-1 encoding code list in alphabetical order by the English short country names officially used by the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency (ISO 3166/MA), which uses country names from United Nations sources.
[4]
The table includes officially assigned codes only.
Saint-Barthélemy and
Saint-Martin were detached from
Guadeloupe and became overseas collectivities of France on
February 21,
2007. The ISO has yet to release the official codes for the new collectivities.
Reserved and user-assigned code elements
Besides the officially assigned codes, code elements may be expanded by using either reserved codes or user-assigned codes.
[5]
Reserved code elements are codes which, while not ISO 3166-1 codes, are in use for some applications in conjunction with the ISO 3166 codes. They are reserved to add flexibility to the coding system. Usually, obsolete codes may be kept as reserved, while some overseas territories, international organizations, and special nationality status have reserved codes of their own. See the corresponding sections in ''
ISO 3166-1 alpha-2'' and ''
ISO 3166-1 alpha-3'' for their respective reserved codes (ISO 3166-1 numeric does not have reserved codes).
User-assigned code elements are codes at the disposal of users who need to add further names of countries, territories or other geographical entities to their in-house application of ISO 3166-1, and the ISO 3166/MA will never use them in the updating process of the standard. See the corresponding sections in ''
ISO 3166-1 alpha-2'', ''
ISO 3166-1 alpha-3'' and ''
ISO 3166-1 numeric'' for their respective user-assigned codes.
Changes
A country or territory may get new codes if it changes its name or its territorial boundaries. A country generally gets new alphabetical codes if its name changes, whereas a new numeric code is associated with a change of boundaries. Changes to ISO 3166-1 are announced in periodic newsletters, of which 12 have been released since the first edition of ISO 3166-1 was published in 1997:
#
Newsletter V-1 – Published
1998-02-05: change of official name of
Samoa
#
Newsletter V-2 – Published
1999-10-01: new entries for
Palestinian Territory, Occupied
#
Newsletter V-3 – Published
2002-02-01: change of alpha-3 code element for
Romania
#
Newsletter V-4 – Published
2002-05-20: name changes for various countries
#
Newsletter V-5 – Published
2002-05-20: change of names and alphabetical code elements for
East Timor
#
Newsletter V-6 – Published
2002-11-15: change of names for
East Timor (to Timor-Leste)
#
Newsletter V-7 – Published
2002-11-15: change of official name of
Comoros
#
Newsletter V-8 – Published
2003-07-23: deletion of
Yugoslavia, new entry for
Serbia and Montenegro
#
Newsletter V-9 – Published
2004-02-13: new entry for
Ã…land Islands
#
Newsletter V-10 – Published
2004-04-26: name changes for
Afghanistan and
Ã…land Islands
#
Newsletter V-11 – Published
2006-03-29: new entries for
Guernsey,
Isle of Man and
Jersey
#
Newsletter V-12 – Published
2006-09-26: deletion of
Serbia and Montenegro, new entries for
Montenegro and
Serbia
The second edition of ISO 3166-1 was published in 2007, which comprises a consolidation of all changes to the lists as published in the newsletters above.
[6]
References
1. ISO 3166 FAQs – General questions
2. Development of ISO 3166
3. ISO 3166-1 and ccTLDs
4. ISO 3166 and the UN
5. Customizing ISO 3166-1
6. Second edition of ISO 3166-1 published
Information on reserved codes taken from "Reserved code elements under ISO 3166-1" published by Secretariat of ISO/TC 46, ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency, 2001-02-13, available on request from ISO 3166/MA.
See also
★
ISO 3166-2
★
ISO 3166-3
★
List of IOC country codes, slightly different codes from ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 codes, used by the
International Olympic Committee
★
List of FIFA country codes, slightly different codes from ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 codes, used by
FIFA
★
Comparison of IOC, FIFA, and ISO 3166 country codes
★
Federal Information Processing Standard
External links
★
ISO 3166/MA – ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency at the International Organization for Standardization – includes up-to-date lists of two-letter codes.
★
United Nations Statistics Division – Standard Country or Area Codes for Statistical Use – includes three-letter and numeric codes.
★
CIA World Factbook – Cross-Reference List of Country Data Codes (public domain)
★
a list of ISO 3166-1 codes (including three-letter and numeric codes), and includes information about changes that have been made over the years.
★
an xml document containing country codes and country names in 7 languages.
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