The country codes can be represented either as a two-letter code (alpha-2) which is recommended as the general-purpose code, a three-letter code (alpha-3) which is more closely related to the country name and a three-digit numeric code (numeric-3) which can be useful if you need to avoid using Latin script.
Following notification from the United Nations (UN), the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency assigns alpha-2 and alpha-3 country code elements to new UN member states. The numeric country code is assigned by the UN.
ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 codes are three-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 areas of geographical interest. They allow a better visual association between the codes and the country names than the two-letter alpha-2 codes (the third set of codes is numeric and hence offers no visual association).[1] They were first included as part of the ISO 3166 standard in its first edition in 1974.
The ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 codes are used most prominently in ISO/IEC 7501-1 for machine-readable passports, as standardized by the International Civil Aviation Organization, with a number of additional codes for special passports; some of these codes are currently reserved and not used at the present stage in ISO 3166-1.[2]
The United Nations uses a combination of ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 and alpha-3 codes, along with codes that pre-date the creation of ISO 3166, for international vehicle registration codes, which are codes used to identify the issuing country of a vehicle registration plate; some of these codes are currently indeterminately reserved in ISO 3166-1.[3]
The following is a complete list of the current officially assigned ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 codes,[4] using a title case version of the English short names officially defined by the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency (ISO 3166/MA):
User-assigned code elements are codes at the disposal of users who need to add further names of countries, territories, or other geographical entities to their in-house application of ISO 3166-1, and the ISO 3166/MA will never use these codes in the updating process of the standard. The following alpha-3 codes can be user-assigned: AAA to AAZ, QMA to QZZ, XAA to XZZ, and ZZA to ZZZ.[5]
NATO STANAG 1059 INT is built upon ISO alpha-3 codes, but also defines alpha-2 codes incompatible with ISO 3166-1. It introduces several private use codes for fictional countries and organizational entities:
Reserved code elements are codes which have become obsolete, or are required in order to enable a particular user application of the standard but do not qualify for inclusion in ISO 3166-1. To avoid transitional application problems and to aid users who require specific additional code elements for the functioning of their coding systems, the ISO 3166/MA, when justified, reserves these codes which it undertakes not to use for other than specified purposes during a limited or indeterminate period of time. The reserved alpha-3 codes can be divided into the following four categories: exceptional reservations, transitional reservations, indeterminate reservations, and codes currently agreed not to use.
Exceptionally reserved code elements are codes reserved at the request of national ISO member bodies, governments and international organizations, which are required in order to support a particular application, as specified by the requesting body and limited to such use; any further use of such code elements is subject to approval by the ISO 3166/MA. The following alpha-3 codes are currently exceptionally reserved:
Transitional reserved code elements are codes reserved after their deletion from ISO 3166-1. These codes may be used only during a transitional period of at least five years while new code elements that may have replaced them are taken into use. These codes may be reassigned by the ISO 3166/MA after the expiration of the transitional period. The following alpha-3 codes are currently transitionally reserved:
Indeterminately reserved code elements are codes used to designate road vehicles under the 1949 and 1968 United Nations Conventions on Road Traffic but differing from those contained in ISO 3166-1. These code elements are expected eventually to be either eliminated or replaced by code elements within ISO 3166-1. In the meantime, the ISO 3166/MA has reserved such code elements for an indeterminate period. Any use beyond the application of the two Conventions is discouraged and will not be approved by the ISO 3166/MA. Moreover, these codes may be reassigned by the ISO 3166/MA at any time. The following alpha-3 codes are currently indeterminately reserved:
Besides the codes currently transitionally reserved and two other codes currently exceptionally reserved (FXX for France, Metropolitan and SUN for USSR), the following alpha-3 codes have also been deleted from ISO 3166-1:[8]
The ISO 3166-1 standard currently comprises 249 countries, 193 of which are sovereign states that are members of the United Nations. Many dependent territories in the ISO 3166-1 standard are also listed as a subdivision of their administering state in the ISO 3166-2 standard.
The sortable table below contains the three sets of ISO 3166-1 country codes for each of its 249 countries, links to the ISO 3166-2 country subdivision codes, and the Internet country code top-level domains (ccTLD) which are based on the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 standard with the few exceptions noted. See the ISO 3166-3 standard for former country codes.
ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 codes are three-letter country codes in the ISO 3166-1 standard to represent countries and dependent territories. They are published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as part of its ISO 3166 standard. They were first included as part of the ISO 3166 standard in its first edition in 1974.
Below is a complete list of the current officially assigned ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 codes, with country names being English short country names officially used by the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency (ISO 3166/MA):
The following alpha-3 codes can be user-assigned: from AAA to AAZ, from QMA to QZZ, from XAA to XZZ, and from ZZA to ZZZ. These code elements are at the disposal of users who need to add further names of countries, territories or other geographical entities to their in-house application of ISO 3166-1, and the ISO 3166/MA will never use them in the updating process of the standard.
Reserved code elements are codes which, while not ISO 3166-1 codes, are in use for some applications in conjunction with the ISO 3166 codes. The ISO 3166/MA therefore reserves them, so that they are not used for new official ISO 3166 codes, thereby creating conflicts between the standard and those applications.
The SDTMIG v3.2 and earlier versions list the CDISC SDTM codelist "COUNTRY" as the terminology codelist to use for the Demographics domain variable COUNTRY. This codelist was retired in 2016-09-30 (Package 27) because it duplicated the ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions. Maintaining the SDTM "COUNTRY" codelist was not reasonable, since it duplicated content maintained by ISO.
For submissions using CDISC CT package 27 or later, submission values that were prepared using the CDISC SDTM "COUNTRY" codelist for DM.COUNTRY may not be those in the current version of ISO 3166-1 alpha-3
Previously in the components section of our geocoding results we includeda key ISO_3166-1_alpha-2 with the corresponding two letter value, forexample ES for Spain. From today we now also include a keyISO_3166-1_alpha-3 with the three letter code, in this case ESP.
ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 allow a better visual association between the codes and the country names than the two-letter alpha-2 codes (the third set of codes is numeric and hence offers no visual association).
The conversion from alpha-3 to alpha-2 is unfortunately not as simple as substr(alpha3, 1, 2), as the IL vs ISR example for Israel shows. 93/249 countries in the ISO-3166-1 database on my system have this property.
Note: ISO 639-2 is the alpha-3 code in Codes for the representation of names of languages-- Part 2. There are 21 languages that have alternative codes for bibliographic or terminology purposes. In those cases, each is listed separately and they are designated as "B" (bibliographic) or "T" (terminology). In all other cases there is only one ISO 639-2 code. Multiple codes assigned to the same language are to be considered synonyms. ISO 639-1 is the alpha-2 code.
There are three types of ISO 3166 codes:
This template consists of a "tree" of subtemplates containing databases of abbreviations. Each successive parameter in the code input tells the template which database to query. The datatype parameter is the most broad and tells the template what type of information you are looking for (i.e. Countries, states, or languages). The specification parameter refines the search. For example, if the datatype parameter is "ISO 3166-1", that tells the template to look for a subtype (alpha2, alpha3, or numeric). If the datatype parameter is "ISO 3166-2", the template will look for a specific country (Canada, Mexico, United States, etc.). If the datatype parameter is "ISO 639-1", the template looks for the name of a language (English, Spanish, Zulu, etc.). The value parameter is the actual name or abbreviation the user wishes to convert.
A character following the ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 codes.This ISO convention consists of three-letter country codes as defined inISO 3166-1. The ISO 3166 standard published by the InternationalOrganization for Standardization (ISO), to represent countries, dependentterritories, and special areas of geographical interest. The map produced bythis function will be limited only to the country indicated in thisparameter, if the network has a extraterritorial sites those will notrepresented.
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