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ISO 3166-2

ISO 3166-2 is the second part of the ISO 3166 standard. It was created for coding the names of subdivisions of countries and dependent areas. The purpose of the standard is to establish a worldwide series of short abbreviations for places, for use on package labels, containers and such. Anywhere where a short alphanumeric code can serve to clearly indicate a location in a more convenient and less ambiguous form than the full place name. US readers may wish to consider them as the equivalent of worldwide zip codes. Within the Wikipedia, the codes from the country pages link to the pages for the locations they identify.

Number of entries

Around 3700.

Format

ISO 3166-2 codes consist of two parts, separated by "-". The first part is the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code element, the second is alphabetic or numeric and has one, two or three digits. The second part often is based on national standards.

Changes / Editions

Changes were annonced in 5 Newsletters

Decoding / Encoding lists

To find the ISO 3166-2 codes for each country see ISO 3166-1, a list of countries. If you are familiar with the two-letter country codes (similar to internet country codes) you can also use the format matrix given below.

Both ways would lead to articles like ISO 3166-2:XX, where XX stands for the ISO 3166-1 code, e.g. ISO 3166-2:AU leads to the code list for Australia.

Format matrix with links to codes

length alpha numeric alpha-numeric

constant
1 char AR, BO, CR, EC, FJ, GM, KG, KI, KM, LS, LU, MG, NE, RW, SL, ST, TG, TM, VE GA, IS PA

constant
2 chars AE, AL, AM, AU, BI, BJ, BN, BR, BS, BW, BY, CA, CD, CF, CH, CL, CM, CV, CZ, DE, DJ, ER, ET, FI, GE, GH, GN, GT, GW, GY, HN, HT, HU, ID, IN, IT, IQ, JO, KW, LA, LB, LR, LT, LV, LY, MD, MU, MW, NA, NG, NI, NL, NP, OM, PK, PL, QA, SB, SH, SK, SN, SO, SR, SV, SY, SZ, TJ, TL, US, UY, UZ, WS, YE, YU, ZA, ZW BD, BG, BH, CI, CN, CU, CY, DO, DZ, EE, FR, GR, HR, IR, JM, JP, KR, LK, MM, MY, NO, PT, SA, SD, TN, TR, TZ, UA, UM, VN, ZM BT

constant
3 chars AO, AF, BA, BE, BF, CS, FM, GB, KP, KZ, MA, MD, MH, MX, NZ, PE, PG, PH, TT, TW DK, KE, SI, UG, VU

mixed
1,2 chars no system?: ES, GQ, IE, IL
1 for regions, 2 for capital: KG
1 for capital, 2 for departments: RO
1 as the general rule, 2 for exceptions SE

KH TH

mixed
2,3 ?:BZ, EG, TD
2 for republics, 3 for cities, regions, districts: RU
2 for cities, 3 for rayons: AZ
2 for capital, 3 other: ?? MR, MV

mixed
1,3 MZ MN ML

mixed
1,2,3 CG, PY

External links

http://www.iso.org/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma/03updates-on-iso-3166/iso_3166-2_track.html -- Track changes, sorted by country
http://www.iso.org/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma/04background-on-iso-3166/iso3166-2.html
http://www.unece.org/cefact/locode/service/sublocat.htm
http://geotags.com/iso3166/

Referenced By

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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "ISO 3166-2".