ISO 3166-1

Codes for 249 countries, territories, or areas of geographical interest are assigned 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: • A member state of the United Nations • A member of one of its specialized agencies • A party to the Statute of the International Court of Justice 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. The ISO 3166/MA may reserve code elements for other entities that do not qualify for inclusion based on the above criteria. For example, because the European Union is not a country, it is not formally included in ISO 3166-1, but for practical reasons, the ISO 3166/MA has "reserved the two-letter combination for the purpose of identifying the European Union within the framework of ISO 3166-1". ==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 (all upper-case) • English (or French) short name lower case (title case) • English (or French) full name • Alpha-2 code • Alpha-3 code • Numeric code • Remarks • Independent • Additional information: Administrative language(s) alpha-2 code element(s) • Additional information: Administrative language(s) alpha-3 code element(s) • Additional information: Local short name(s) ==Naming and code construction==

uses the country names chosen by the United Nations, some of which are disputed. Naming and disputes The country names used in ISO 3166-1 are taken from the two UN sources. Some country names used by the UN, and accordingly by ISO, are disputed: Coding The codes are chosen, according to the ISO 3166/MA, "to reflect the significant, unique component of the country name in order to allow a visual association between country name and country code". For this reason, common components of country names like "Republic", "Kingdom", "United", "Federal" or "Democratic" are normally not used for deriving the code elements. As a consequence, for example, the United Kingdom is officially assigned the alpha-2 code rather than , based on its official name "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" (although is reserved on the request of the United Kingdom). The rule is not watertight: the United States of America is still assigned the code for example. Some codes are chosen based on the native names of the countries. For example, Germany is assigned the alpha-2 code , based on its native name "Deutschland". ==Codes==

The complete ISO 3166-1 list of countries and their assigned codes, listed in alphabetical order by the country's English short name used by the ISO 3166/MA: ''Each country's alpha-2 code is linked to more information about the assignment of its code elements.'' Reserved and user-assigned code elements The officially assigned code elements may be expanded by using either reserved codes or user-assigned codes. • Alpha-2: , to , to , and • Alpha-3: to , to , to , and to • Numeric: to User-assigned codes in wide use • : Used to denote Northern Ireland for the purposes of VAT collection in trade between it and the European Union. ==Changes==

The ISO 3166/MA updates ISO 3166-1 when necessary. A country is normally 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 country names that have been deleted from ISO 3166-1 are published in ISO 3166-3. ISO formerly announced changes in newsletters which updated the standard, and periodically released new editions which consolidated the newsletter changes. As of July 2013, changes are published in the online catalogue of ISO only, and newsletters are no longer published. Past newsletters remain available via the search option on the ISO website. ==See also==

• ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency, International Organization for Standardization (ISO). . • Country names and code elements — list of alpha-2 codes. . • Standard Country or Area Codes for Statistical Use, United Nations Statistics Division. . • Countries or areas, codes and abbreviations — list of alpha-3 and numeric codes (a few territories officially assigned codes in ISO 3166-1 are not included in this list). . • The World Factbook (public domain), Central Intelligence Agency • Appendix D – Country Data Codes — comparison of GEC (formerly FIPS 10-4), ISO 3166, and STANAG 1059 country codes. . sv:ISO 3166#ISO 3166-1-koder