All,
In the last call I pleaded for consistency of terms, when referring to
ISO subjects. As I have noticed over time (and not only our group but
all over the ICANN community) there is a tendency use informal
terminology and definitions in various discussions. That does sometimes
causes confusions of Babylonian proportions.
I offer here some clarifications in the form of this FAQ. I hope it
helps to minimize the confusion in the discussion, and also in the
development of the glossary to our current draft.
Regards,
jaap
----
Q: What is the ISO 3166?
A: It is an international standard developed by ISO. ISO 3166 provides
universally applicable coded representations of names of countries
(current and non-current), dependencies, and other areas of
particular geopolitical interest and their subdivisions. The
standards consists of three parts, ISO 3166-1 (Part 1: Countries
codes), ISO 3166-2 (Part 2: Country subdivisions code), ISO3166-3
(Part 3: Code for formerly used names of countries). The edition
(version) of is identified by the year of publication. Therefore
the full reference to the current (third) Edition of ISO 3166 Part
is ISO 3166-1:2013.
The codes only uses the ASCII letters (A-Z) and numbers (0-9) and
for ISO 3166-2, hyphens.
Q: What form of codes are defined?
A: ISO3166-1 uses two letter codes alpha-2), three letter codes
(alpha-3) and numerical codes, ISO 3166-2 uses codes starting with
and ISO 3166 alpha-2 code an hyphen and one or more letters or
numbers, while ISO 3166-4 uses 4 letter codes.
The codes can have various classifications such as Assigned (by ISO
3166/MA or User Assigned), Unassigned, Reserved in various ways
(Exceptionally, transitional, and Indeterminately). See also
<
http://www.iso.org/iso/home/standards/country_codes/country_codes_glossary.htm>
for details.
The real authoritative source for these terms is of course the
Standard itself.
Q: What is the ISO list code list?
A: There just a list. However the term is used colloquially to denote
(most of the time) the list with the Country Code Assignments in
Section 9 of ISO 3166-1. People tend to use this imprecise, often
lumping the Reserved Codes also in the notion of "the ISO 3166
list". At the same token but even more confusing is the use of the
term "the ISO 3166-2 list" not meaning part 2 of the standard but
the list of the alpha-2 codes from Part one (and then it isn't
whether they mean all possible codes, both the Assigned and the
Reserved or just the Assigned).
Q: What is the purpose of all these codes anyway?
A: To paraphrase from ISO 3166-1, the codes are intended to be used in
any application requiring the expression of current country names
in coded form. The term "country names" is defined in definition
3.4 "name of country, dependency, or other area of particular
geopolitical interest". That is why often sees the term "Countries
and territories" is used as a reminder that it is not just about
countries.
Q: What has statistics to do with these codes?
A: The list of countries in Part 1 are based (but not limited to) on
the list in the "Standard Country or Area Code for Statistical Use"
of the UN.
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