Country codes are short alphabetic or numeric geographical codes (

geocode A geocode is a code that represents a geographic entity (location or object). It is a unique identifier of the entity, to distinguish it from others in a finite set of geographic entities. In general the ''geocode'' is a human-readable and ...

s) developed to represent countries and

dependent area A dependent territory, dependent area, or dependency (sometimes referred as an external territory) is a territory that does not possess full political independence or sovereignty as a sovereign state, yet remains politically outside the contr ...

s, for use in

data processing Data processing is the collection and manipulation of digital data to produce meaningful information. Data processing is a form of ''information processing'', which is the modification (processing) of information in any manner detectable by an ...

and communications. Several different systems have been developed to do this. The term ''country code'' frequently refers to ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 or international dialing codes, the E.164 country calling codes.

ISO 3166-1

This standard defines for most of the countries and dependent areas in the world: *a two-letter ( ISO 3166-1 alpha-2) *a three-letter ( ISO 3166-1 alpha-3), and *a three-digit numeric ( ISO 3166-1 numeric) code. The two-letter codes are used as the basis for some other codes or applications, for example, *for

ISO 4217 ISO 4217 is a standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) that defines alpha codes and numeric codes for the representation of currencies and provides information about the relationships between individual cu ...

currency codes and *with deviations, for country code

top-level domain A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet after the root domain. The top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains in ...

names (ccTLDs) on the Internet: list of Internet TLDs. For more applications see ISO 3166-1 alpha-2.

Other country codes

* European Union: **Before the 2004 EU enlargement the EU used the UN Road Traffic Conventions license plate codes. Since then, it has used the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code, but with two modification

***EL for Greece (instead of GR) ***(formerly) UK for United Kingdom (instead of GB) **The '' Nomenclature des unités territoriales statistiques'' (Nomenclature of territorial units for statistics, NUTS) of the European Union, mostly focusing on subdivisions of the EU member states *

FIFA FIFA (; stands for ''Fédération Internationale de Football Association'' ( French), meaning International Association Football Federation ) is the international governing body of association football, beach football and futsal. It was found ...

(Fédération Internationale de Football Association) assigns a three-letter code (dubbed FIFA Trigramme) to each of its member and non-member countries: List of FIFA country codes * Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS)

10-4 Ten-codes, officially known as ten signals, are brevity codes used to represent common phrases in voice communication, particularly by law enforcement and in Citizens Band (CB) radio transmissions. The police version of ten-codes is officially k ...

defined two-letter codes used by the U.S. government and in the

CIA World Factbook ''The World Factbook'', also known as the ''CIA World Factbook'', is a reference resource produced by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with almanac-style information about the countries of the world. The official print version is available ...

: list of FIPS country codes. On September 2, 2008, FIPS 10-4 was one of ten standards withdrawn by

NIST The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical sci ...

as a Federal Information Processing Standard. * The Bureau of Transportation Statistics, part of the United States Department of Transportation (US DOT), maintains its own list of codes, so-called World Area Codes (WAC), for state and country codes. * GOST 7.67: country codes in

Cyrillic , bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця , fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs , fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic , fam3 = Phoenician , fam4 = G ...

from the GOST standards committee *From the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO): ** The national prefixes used in aircraft registration numbers ** Location prefixes in four-character ICAO airport codes * International Olympic Committee (IOC) three-letter codes used in sporting events: list of IOC country codes *From the International Telecommunication Union (ITU): **the E.164 international telephone dialing codes:

list of country calling codes Country calling codes or country dial-in codes are telephone number prefixes for reaching telephone subscribers in the networks of the member countries or regions of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The codes are defined by the ...

with 1-3 digits, **the E.212

mobile country codes The ITU-T Recommendation E.212 defines mobile country codes (MCC) as well as mobile network codes (MNC). Overview The mobile country code consists of three decimal digits and the mobile network code consists of two or three decimal digits (for e ...

(MCC), for mobile/wireless phone addresses, **the first few characters of call signs of radio stations (maritime, aeronautical,

amateur radio Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, is the use of the radio frequency spectrum for purposes of non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, private recreation, radiosport, contesting, and emergency communic ...

, broadcasting, and so on) define the country: the ITU prefix, **

ITU letter codes The radiocommunication division of the International Telecommunication Union uses the following letter codes to identify its member countries. Eight countries are assigned single-letter codes (, , , , , , , ), while the rest have codes three lett ...

for member-countries, ** ITU prefix - amateur and experimental stations - The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) assigns national telecommunication prefixes for

amateur An amateur () is generally considered a person who pursues an avocation independent from their source of income. Amateurs and their pursuits are also described as popular, informal, autodidacticism, self-taught, user-generated, do it yourself, DI ...

and experimental radio use, so that operators can be identified by their country of origin. These prefixes are legally administered by the national entity to which prefix ranges are assigned. **Three-digit codes used to identify countries in maritime mobile radio transmissions, known as maritime identification digits * License plates for automobiles: **Under the 1949 and 1968 United Nations Road Traffic Conventions (distinguishing signs of vehicles in international traffic): List of international license plate codes. ** Diplomatic license plates in the United States, assigned by the

U.S. State Department The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs of other nati ...

. * North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) used two-letter codes of its own: list of NATO country codes. They were largely borrowed from the FIPS 10-4 codes mentioned below. In 2003 the eighth edition of the Standardisation Agreement (STANAG) adopted the ISO 3166 three-letter codes with one exception (the code for Macedonia). With the ninth edition, NATO is transitioning to four- and six-letter codes based on ISO 3166 with a few exceptions and additions * United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) also has its own list of trigram country codes * World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO): WIPO ST.3 gives two-letter codes to countries and regional intellectual property organizations * World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has its own list of country codes, used in reporting meteorological observations * UIC (the

International Union of Railways The International Union of Railways (UIC, french: Union internationale des wikt:chemin de fer, chemins de fer) is an international rail transport industry body. History The railways of Europe originated as many separate concerns, and there wer ...

): UIC Country Codes The developers of ISO 3166 intended that in time it would replace other coding systems in existence.

Other codings

The following can represent countries: *The initial digits of International Standard Book Numbers ( ISBN) are group identifiers for countries, areas, or language regions. *The first three digits of GS1 Company Prefixes used to identify products, for example, in barcodes, designate (national) numbering agencies.

Lists of country codes by country

A - B - C - D–E - F - G - H–I - J–K - L - M - N - O–Q - R - S - T - U–Z

References

External links