ISO 3166-2 Totally Explained

Everything about Iso 3166-2 totally explained

ISO 3166-2 is the second part of the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). It is a geocode system created for coding the names of country subdivisions 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. There are around 3700 different codes. The official name of the standard is Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions – Part 2: Country subdivision code. It was first published in 1998.

Format

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

Changes and editions

Changes were announced in different newsletters. These mostly comprise addition of new subdivisions and spelling corrections.

A second edition (ISO 3166-2:2007) was published on 2007-12-15.

Decoding/encoding lists

To find the ISO 3166-2 codes for each country see ISO 3166-1, a list of countries. If you're 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, for example leads to the code list for Australia.

Format matrix with links to codes

Some of the codes are developed by ISO 3166/MA; these are copyrighted. Others are already in use in the specific countries.

length	Copyright	alpha	numeric	alpha-numeric
constant 1 char	Free:
	Partially free:
	ISO - Copyright:
	Unsorted:	,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,	,,
constant 2 chars	Free:	,
	Partially free:	,
	ISO - Copyright:
	Unsorted:	,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,	,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
constant 3 chars	Free
	Partially free:
	ISO - Copyright:
	Unsorted:	,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,	,,,,,
mixed 1,2 chars	Free:
	Partially free:
	ISO - Copyright:
	Unsorted:	no system?:,, 1 for regions, 2 for capital: 1 for capital, 2 for departments: 1 as the general rule, 2 for exceptions
mixed 2,3	Free:
	Partially free:
	ISO - Copyright:
	Unsorted:	?:,, 2 for names consisting of two words, 3 otherwise: (from Australian Standard AS4212:1994) 2 for republics, 3 for cities, regions, districts: 2 for cities, 3 for rayons: 3 for capital, 2 for other:		,
mixed 1,3	Free:
	Partially free:
	ISO - Copyright:
	Unsorted:	3 for capital, 1 for provinces:
mixed 1,2,3	Free:
	Partially free:
	ISO - Copyright:
	Unsorted:			,

Further Information

Get more info on 'Iso 3166-2'.

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