Country Codes

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The following list shows the countries of the world, according to international standard ISO 3166-1. Selected standard codes for the countries are shown. There is also an indication of which entities are or are not independent countries.

The U.N. Secretariat and ISO have issued codes for Saint-Barthélemy and Saint-Martin.

Sources and notes:

ISO - The Maintenance Agency for ISO standard 3166 is supported directly by the central secretariat of the ISO in Geneva. It maintains an authoritative list of ISO Alpha-2 Codes . Its list is coordinated with a list of countries used by the United Nations Statistics Division for reporting purposes. If I understand correctly, the organization that defines ISO Alpha-3 and Numeric Codes is actually the U.N. Statistics Division . Here are the changes since 1982  for those codes. See the changes in ISO 3166-1 page for the change history. I have also written a page about using ISO 3166-1 in software.

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) administers top-level domain names (.com, .edu, .org, and so on). The majority of top-level domain names are referred to as ccTLD, or country-code Top Level Domains. They include .fr, .in, etc. URLs with .fr as their top-level domain are supposed to be assigned to French individuals, organizations, and companies by a French administrative body. IANA has chosen to use ISO 3166 as a basis for the ccTLDs (see their list ), and sticks to it very closely. It does, however, use .uk as well as .gb for the United Kingdom. It also allows .ac for Ascension Island (properly part of Saint Helena).

ITU - A number of Web pages say that the ITU country codes are being used, mostly to identify radio transmitter locations. The ITU Web site  has the list. These should not be confused with several other ITU codes, mostly numeric, which are used as dialing prefixes (e.g., ITU-T Recommendation E.164 ). The ITU code for Serbia and Montenegro recently changed from YUG to SCG.

FIPS - The FIPS 10-4  page has an official U.S. government listing of codes. I have been told that the Departments of State and Defense use these FIPS codes, while government agencies dealing with international trade and cooperation use the ISO Alpha-2 codes (which are also designated FIPS 104-1, to add to the confusion). Both sets of codes are so entrenched that it's impractical for the U.S. to standardize on just one set. See the changes in FIPS PUB 10 page for the change history. Eric Muller has created a website  that keeps track of changes in the FIPS codes for primary subdivisions.

The FIPS 10-4 country list differs from ISO 3166 in many minor and sometimes surprising ways. It has assigned separate codes to Bassas da India (BS), Europa Island (EU), Glorioso Islands (GO), Juan de Nova Island (JU), and Tromelin Island (TE), tiny and mostly uninhabited Indian Ocean islands administered with the French Southern Territories; also, Ashmore and Cartier Islands (AT) and Coral Sea Islands (CR), Australian territories; and Clipperton Island (IP), which is administered from French Polynesia. It splits Svalbard and Jan Mayen Islands into two countries (JN and SV). a It shows United States Minor Outlying Islands as nine countries: Baker Island (FQ), Howland Island (HQ), Jarvis Island (DQ), Johnston Atoll (JQ), Kingman Reef (KQ), Midway Islands (MQ), Navassa Island (BQ), Palmyra Atoll (LQ), and Wake Island (WQ). It treats Palestine as the Gaza Strip (GZ) plus the West Bank (WE); also, a code is assigned to No Man's Land (NM), a small and winding band of neutral territory near Jerusalem. Since Kosovo declared independence, it has treated Serbia as Serbia proper (RI) plus Kosovo (KV). The 2004 edition of the CIA World Factbook explains why it has added country listings for Akrotiri and Dhekelia, two British military bases in Cyprus. They were assigned the FIPS codes AX and DX, respectively, by FIPS Change Notice 12, dated 2007-06-11. At the same time, codes were added for the Southern Kuril Islands (a.k.a. Hoppo Ryodo) (PJ) and areas of undesignated sovereignty (UU), which overlaps with some other codes. Finally, FIPS allocates codes to the Paracel (PF) and Spratly (PG) Islands, two island groups in the South China Sea that are claimed by every country within shooting distance; ISO 3166 is noncommital about the Paracels and Spratlys.

When ISO split Åland from Finland, FIPS did not, so that is one more point of difference between them.

IOC - The International Olympics Committee code for Yugoslavia changed from YUG to SCG at about the same time as the ISO Alpha-3 code. Faroe Islands didn't compete in the 2004 Olympics, but in the Paralympic Games they were identified by FRO rather than the former code, FAR. Thanks to Richard Rundle for mentioning the Faroes change.

FIFA - The FIFA (soccer) codes are taken from the FIFA website, with supplemental codes as shown in Wikipedia . There are a couple of discrepancies between the two sources. Notes: 1 The United Kingdom is covered by several codes: ENG (England), NIR (Northern Ireland), SCO (Scotland), and WAL (Wales). 2 Represents Tahiti. 3 Represents Ross Dependency.

DS - Have you ever wondered about those white oval stickers on cars, with a country code in them? They are provided for by Article 20 of the Convention on Road Traffic  (Geneva, 1949). Therein, they are called "distinguishing signs of the place of registration" of vehicles. There's a list of them on this United Nations Economic Commission for Europe  page. However, some of the codes reported there are not the ones in actual use, because some countries are lax in reporting their codes to the U.N. Secretary General. Neil Parker, John Weeks, and Reg Wilson (of Europlate), in their book "Registration Plates of the World" (ISBN 0-9502735-6-2 paperback, 0-9502735-7-0 hardback), list the codes actually being used on vehicles. That list (as sent to me by Mr. Parker) is the primary source of the data given in the table above.

In recent years, unauthorized stickers have come on the market to promote various tourist areas. One of the earliest was MV for Martha's Vineyard. Besides, when a code changes (e.g. Faroe Islands changed from FR to FO in the mid-1990s), the old stickers don't disappear in a flash. Consequently, even direct observation may not be sufficient to establish the correct Distinguishing Sign for a country.

On 2003-09-11, following the change in the ISO codes for Serbia and Montenegro, the country's Distinguishing Sign was also changed to SCG (formerly YU). Mr. Parker reports that Botswana changed from RB to BW, notifying the U.N. authority in 2003.

The list of countries by Distinguishing Sign is a bit different from the ISO 3166 country list. Instead of Tanzania, there are Tanganyika (EAT) and Zanzibar (EAZ), dating back to before 1964 when the two countries united. There is even a code for Alderney (GBA), which is a dependency of Guernsey.

MARC - MARC is a standard for encoding bibliographic materials in electronic form. The Library of Congress maintains the MARC code list for countries . For background on MARC and a list of country code changes, see the changes in MARC page. In general, MARC country codes are two letters. For three countries, MARC provides three-letter subdivision codes. In these cases, the first two letters represent the state or province, and the third letter indicates the country. If the first two letters are xx, the code represents a location in an unspecified subdivision of that country. b There are five MARC codes that represent parts of United States Minor Outlying Islands: ji Johnston Atoll, xf Midway Islands, wk Wake Island, uc United States Misc. Caribbean Islands, and up United States Misc. Pacific Islands.

Misc. - The Educational Testing Service has a set of three-digit country codes in a PDF file .

The U.S. Census Bureau has a set of four-digit country codes - Schedule C  - for use in reporting trade statistics. The (PDF file) AID Geographic Code Book  lists region and country codes used by the U.S. Agency for International Development, along with FIPS codes.

There are NATO standards called Stanag (for Standardization Agreement), used to communicate military information among NATO members. STANAG 1059 is used for countries and other regions. The country codes are based closely on the ISO Alpha-3 codes. The Stanag code for Macedonia is FYR instead of MKD; almost all of the others are the same.

Eurostat, the statistical agency of the European Union, has modified the ISO 3166-1 standard to create its own Geonomenclature , or GEONOM for short. These codes are intended to be used in compiling external trade statistics for EU countries.