ISO 3166 is a standard published by the International Organization for Standardization.
It defines codes for the names of countries, dependent territories, special areas of geographical
interest, and their principal subdivisions.
The official name of the standard is Codes for the representation of names of countries
and their subdivisions.
Parts It consists of three parts:
ISO 3166-1, Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions
– Part 1: Country codes, defines codes for the names of countries, dependent territories,
and special areas of geographical interest.
It defines three sets of country codes: ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 – two-letter country
codes which are the most widely used of the three, and used most prominently for the Internet's
country code top-level domains.
ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 – three-letter country codes which allow a better visual association
between the codes and the country names than the alpha-2 codes.
ISO 3166-1 numeric – three-digit country codes which are identical to those developed
and maintained by the United Nations Statistics Division, with the advantage of script independence,
and hence useful for people or systems using non-Latin scripts.
ISO 3166-2, Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions
– Part 2: Country subdivision code, defines codes for the names of the principal subdivisions
of all countries coded in ISO 3166-1.
ISO 3166-3, Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions
– Part 3: Code for formerly used names of countries, defines codes for country names
which have been deleted from ISO 3166-1 since its first publication in 1974.
Editions The first edition of ISO 3166 was published
in 1974, which included only alphabetic country codes.
The second edition, published in 1981, also included numeric country codes, with the third
and fourth editions published in 1988 and 1993 respectively.
The fifth edition, published between 1997 and 1999, was expanded into three parts to
include codes for subdivisions and former countries.
ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency The ISO 3166 standard is maintained by the
ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency, located at the ISO central office in Geneva, Switzerland.
Originally it was located at the Deutsches Institut für Normung in Berlin, Germany.
Its principal tasks are: To add and to eliminate country names and
to assign code elements to them; To publish lists of country names and code
elements; To maintain a reference list of all country
code elements and country subdivision code elements used and their period of use;
To issue newsletters announcing changes to the code tables;
To advise users on the application of ISO 3166.
Members There are ten experts with voting rights on
the ISO 3166/MA.
Five are representatives of national standards organizations:
Association française de normalisation – France American National Standards Institute – United
States British Standards Institution – United Kingdom
Deutsches Institut für Normung – Germany Swedish Standards Institute – Sweden
The other five are representatives of major United Nations agencies or other international
organizations who are all users of ISO 3166-1: International Atomic Energy Agency
International Telecommunication Union Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers United Nations Economic Commission for Europe
Universal Postal Union The ISO 3166/MA has further associated members
who do not participate in the votes but who, through their expertise, have significant
influence on the decision-taking procedure in the maintenance agency.
See also FIPS 10-4
ISO 639 – Codes for the representation of names of languages
ISO 4217 – Currency codes ISO 15924 – Codes for the representation
of names of scripts References
External links Related websites
ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency, International Organization for Standardization