Country codes are short alphabetic or numeric

geographical Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and ...

codes ( geocodes) 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 ...

and

communication Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inqu ...

s. Several different systems have been developed to do this. The term ''country code'' frequently refers to

ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes are two-letter country codes defined in ISO 3166-1, part of the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), to represent countries, dependent territories, and special are ...

or international dialing codes, the E.164

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 ...

ISO 3166-1

This standard defines for most of the countries and dependent areas in the world: *a two-letter (

) *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

currency A currency, "in circulation", from la, currens, -entis, literally meaning "running" or "traversing" is a standardization of money in any form, in use or circulation as a medium of exchange, for example banknotes and coins. A more general ...

codes and *with deviations, for country code top-level domain names (ccTLDs) on the Internet: list of Internet TLDs. For more applications see

Other country codes

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been ...

: **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 ISO 3166-1 (''Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions – Part 1: Country codes'') is a standard defining codes for the names of countries, dependent territories, and special areas of geographical interest. It ...

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

, mostly focusing on subdivisions of the EU member states * FIFA (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 The Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) of the United States are a set of publicly announced standards that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed for use in computer systems of non-military, America ...

(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:

list of FIPS country codes This is a list of FIPS 10-4 country codes for ''Countries, Dependencies, Areas of Special Sovereignty, and Their Principal Administrative Divisions''. The two-letter country codes were used by the US government for geographical data processing ...

. 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 sc ...

as a Federal Information Processing Standard. * The Bureau of Transportation Statistics, part of the

United States Department of Transportation The United States Department of Transportation (USDOT or DOT) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government. It is headed by the secretary of transportation, who reports directly to the President of the United States an ...

(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 from the

GOST GOST (russian: ГОСТ) refers to a set of international technical standards maintained by the ''Euro-Asian Council for Standardization, Metrology and Certification (EASC)'', a regional standards organization operating under the auspices of th ...

standards committee *From the

International Civil Aviation Organization The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO, ) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that coordinates the principles and techniques of international air navigation, and fosters the planning and development of international ...

(ICAO): ** The national prefixes used in aircraft registration numbers ** Location prefixes in four-character

ICAO airport code The ICAO airport code or location indicator is a four-letter code designating aerodromes around the world. These codes, as defined by the International Civil Aviation Organization and published in ICAO Document 7910: ''Location Indicators'', ...

s *

International Olympic Committee The International Olympic Committee (IOC; french: link=no, Comité international olympique, ''CIO'') is a non-governmental sports organisation based in Lausanne, Switzerland. It is constituted in the form of an association under the Swis ...

(IOC) three-letter codes used in sporting events:

list of IOC country codes The International Olympic Committee (IOC) uses three-letter abbreviation country codes to refer to each group of athletes that participate in the Olympic Games. Each geocode usually identifies a National Olympic Committee (NOC), but there a ...

*From the

International Telecommunication Union The International Telecommunication Union is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for many matters related to information and communication technologies. It was established on 17 May 1865 as the International Telegraph Unio ...

(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 communi ...

, 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

(ITU) assigns national telecommunication prefixes for amateur 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 The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two No ...

(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 The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)french: Programme des Nations unies pour le développement, PNUD is a United Nations agency tasked with helping countries eliminate poverty and achieve sustainable economic growth and human dev ...

(UNDP) also has its own list of trigram country codes *

World Intellectual Property Organization The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO; french: link=no, Organisation mondiale de la propriété intellectuelle (OMPI)) is one of the 15 specialized agencies of the United Nations (UN). Pursuant to the 1967 Convention Establishin ...

(WIPO): WIPO ST.3 gives two-letter codes to countries and regional intellectual property organizations *

World Meteorological Organization The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for promoting international cooperation on atmospheric science, climatology, hydrology and geophysics. The WMO originated from the Intern ...

(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 chemins de fer) is an international rail transport industry body. History The railways of Europe originated as many separate concerns, and there were many border chang ...

): 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 The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a numeric commercial book identifier that is intended to be unique. Publishers purchase ISBNs from an affiliate of the International ISBN Agency. An ISBN is assigned to each separate edition an ...

) are group identifiers for countries, areas, or language regions. *The first three digits of GS1 Company Prefixes used to identify products, for example, in

barcode A barcode or bar code is a method of representing data in a visual, Machine-readable data, machine-readable form. Initially, barcodes represented data by varying the widths, spacings and sizes of parallel lines. These barcodes, now commonly refe ...

s, 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