ISO 3166

ISO 3166 is a three-part geographic coding standard for coding the names of countries and dependent areas, and the principal subdivisions thereof.

Among other things, the codes are used for class="external">[1:

• Federal Express uses the IATA codes, which are the ISO 3166-1 codes, for package shipping
• in postal containers used to exchange mail internationally
• in machine-readable passports, which use the 3 letter codes(ISO/IEC 7501-1
• to identify currencies in international transactions (ISO 4217)
• in the International Securities Identification Number (ISO 6166)
• the top level country domain codes on the internet, which use the 2 character forms
• the U/LOCODEs for international trade to identify ports, customs offices and other sites of interest in trade.
• the WIPO uses them for intellectual property tracking

• ISO 3166-1 codes for country and dependent area names, first published in 1974
  • ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 the famous two-letter country codes
  • ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 three-letter country codes
  • ISO 3166-1 numeric
• ISO 3166-2 defines codes for the principal subdivisions of a country or dependent area.
  • ISO 3166-2:2000-06-21 Newsletter I-1
  • ISO 3166-2:2002-05-21 Newsletter I-2
  • ISO 3166-2:2002-08-20 Newsletter I-3
  • ISO 3166-2:2002-12-10 Newsletter I-4
  • ISO 3166-2:2003-09-05 Newsletter I-5
• ISO 3166-3 defines codes for superseded ISO 3166-1 codes, first published in 1998.

• http://www.iso.org/i/prods-services/index.html -- The ISO 3166/MA-Secretariat
• http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/codes/country.htm -- Country codes