ISO 3166-1 is part of the
ISO
3166 standard published by the
International
Organization for Standardization (ISO), and defines
codes for the names of
countries,
dependent
territories, and special areas of geographical interest. 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:
ISO 3166 has included alphabetic 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.
As a widely used international standard, ISO 3166-1 is implemented
in other standards and used by international organizations, to
allow facilitation of the exchange of goods and information.
However, it is not the only standard for country codes.
Other country codes used by
many international organizations are partly or totally incompatible
with ISO 3166-1, although some of them closely correspond to ISO
3166-1 codes.
Criteria for inclusion
Currently 246 countries, territories, or areas of geographical
interest are assigned official codes in ISO 3166-1. According to
the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency (ISO 3166/MA), 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:
To be listed in the bulletin
Country Names, a country must
either be:
The list of names in
Country and Region Codes for Statistical
Use of the UN Statistics Division is based on the bulletin
Country Names and other UN sources.
Once a country name or territory name appears in either of these
two sources, it will be added to ISO 3166-1 by default.
Information included
ISO 3166-1 is published officially in both
English and
French. Since the second edition of ISO
3166-1, the following columns are included for each entry:
- COUNTRY NAME English (or French) short name
- English (or French) short name lower case
- English (or French) full name
- Alpha-2 code
- Alpha-3 code
- Numeric code
- Remarks
- Independent (# denotes the country is considered a sovereign state)
- Additional information: Administrative language alpha-2
- Additional information: Administrative language(s) alpha-3
- Additional information: Local short name
Current codes
Officially assigned code elements
The following is a complete ISO 3166-1 encoding list of the
countries which are assigned official codes. It is listed in
alphabetical order by the English short country names officially
used by the ISO 3166/MA, which are all from United Nations sources.
For
example, Macedonia
is listed as "Macedonia, the former Yugoslav
Republic of" because of the Macedonia naming dispute, and
Taiwan
is listed as "Taiwan, Province of China" because of
its political status within
the UN (the Republic of
China
is not recognized by the UN).
Click on the button in the header to sort each column.
For more information on each country and the assignment of its
code elements, see the corresponding table in ISO 3166-1
alpha-2.
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.
Reserved code elements are codes which have become obsolete, or are
required in order to enable a particular user application of the
standard but do not qualify for inclusion in ISO 3166-1. To avoid
transitional application problems and to aid users who require
specific additional code elements for the functioning of their
coding systems, the ISO 3166/MA, when justified, reserves these
codes which it undertakes not to use for other than specified
purposes during a limited or indeterminate period of time. Codes
are usually reserved for former countries, overseas territories,
international organizations, and special nationality status. The
reserved alpha-2 and alpha-3 codes can be divided into the
following four categories
(click on the links for the reserved
codes of each category):
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 these codes in the updating
process of the standard. The following codes can be user-assigned:
- Alpha-2:
AA, QM to QZ, XA to
XZ, and ZZ
- Alpha-3:
AAA to AAZ, QMA to QZZ,
XAA to XZZ, and ZZA to ZZZ
- Numeric:
900 to 999
Editions and changes
There have been two editions of ISO 3166-1. The first edition (ISO
3166-1:1997) was published on 1997-09-25, and the second edition
(ISO 3166-1:2006) was published on 2006-11-20 (later corrected
byits Technical Corrigendum 1, ISO 3166-1:2006/Cor 1:2007,
published on 2007-07-15).
Between different editions, the ISO 3166/MA updates the code lists
by announcing the changes in newsletters. A country is usually
assigned new ISO 3166-1 codes if it changes its name or its
territorial boundaries. In general, new alphabetic codes are
assigned if a country changes a significant part of its name, while
a new numeric code is assigned if a country changes its territorial
boundaries. Codes for formerly used country names that were deleted
from ISO 3166-1 are published in
ISO
3166-3.
| Newsletter
updates on the 1st edition of ISO 3166-1 (ISO
3166-1:1997) |
| Newsletter |
Publication date |
Contents |
| V-1 |
1998-02-05 |
Change
of official name (Samoa ) |
| V-2 |
1999-10-01 |
Inclusion of new country name and code
elements (Occupied
Palestinian Territory ) |
| V-3 |
2002-02-01 |
Change
of alpha-3 Code Element (Romania ) |
| V-4 |
2002-05-20 |
Name
changes (Afghanistan , Azerbaijan , Bahrain , Bosnia and
Herzegovina , Fiji , Hong Kong , Kazakhstan , Kiribati , Macao , Niue , Somalia , and
Venezuela ) |
| V-5 |
2002-05-20 |
Change of names and alphabetical code
elements of East
Timor |
| V-6 |
2002-11-15 |
Change of names of East Timor (to Timor-Leste) |
| V-7 |
2003-01-14 |
Change of official name of Comoros |
| V-8 |
2003-07-23 |
Deletion of Yugoslavia ; inclusion of Serbia and Montenegro with new
alphabetical code elements |
| V-9 |
2004-02-13 |
Inclusion of an entry for Åland
Islands |
| V-10 |
2004-04-26 |
Name
changes (Afghanistan and Åland Islands) |
| V-11 |
2006-03-29 |
Inclusion of an entry for Jersey , Guernsey and Isle of
Man . Change of remark for the United Kingdom |
| V-12 |
2006-09-26 |
Inclusion of the new entries for Serbia and Montenegro (replacing Serbia
and Montenegro) |
| Newsletter
updates on the 2nd edition of ISO 3166-1 (ISO
3166-1:2006) |
| Newsletter |
Publication date |
Contents |
| VI-1 |
2007-09-21 |
Assignment of code elements for Saint
Barthélemy and Saint
Martin and update of France and other
French Territories (French Polynesia , French Southern Territories , Guadeloupe , and Réunion ) |
| VI-2 |
2008-03-31 |
Name
changes for Moldova , Montenegro and other minor corrections (Madagascar , Occupied Palestinian Territory, and Saint Barthélemy) |
| VI-3 |
2008-09-09 |
Name
change for Nepal and other
minor corrections (Greenland , Guernsey, Moldova, and Nigeria ) |
| VI-4 |
2009-01-07 |
Name
change for the Republic of
Moldova and other minor corrections (Central
African Republic and Comoros) |
| VI-5 |
2009-03-03 |
Name
change for Bolivarian
Republic of Venezuela and other
minor corrections (Kiribati and Tuvalu ) |
| VI-6 |
2009-05-08 |
Name
change for Plurinational State of
Bolivia |
See also
- ISO 639 — Codes for the
representation of names of languages
References
External links
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