During major international sports competitions at airports, train stations, foreign car numbers and so on, next to the name of the country you can see a code of three Latin letters. These are international abbreviations for countries and independent territories. There are various codification systems for names.
Why country abbreviations are needed
In different languages of the world, country names can sound and look completely different because of the difference in alphabet, type of alphabet and appearance of letters. To avoid confusion at important official political or sporting events in the international space, several international systems of abbreviated names of countries of the world were invented.
Universal codes of different countries and independent territories of ISO (ISO) were developed by specialists of the United Nations. In addition to it, there is a classification of the International Olympic Committee, which does not quite coincide with ISO, the own code system of the International Football Federation (FIFA), the Russian classification of GOST, but they are much less popular and are not suitable for all events and occasions. In addition to GOST, all of the above systems use the abbreviated name of the countries in English.
Types of international codification systems
ISO
The international system ISO-3166-1 is divided into 3 categories: Alpha-2, Alpha-3 and digital codification.
Codes for Alpha-2 consist of two capital letters in Latin, and codes for Alpha-3 consist of three. Digital codes consist of three digits.
The Alpha-2 system is used when the country designation needs to be reduced as much as possible.
The ISO system is the most popular, it is used more often than others. In order to receive its own ISO code, a state must be a member of the United Nations or a specialized agency of the United Nations, or take part in drafting the code of laws of the International Court of Justice of the organization.
The IOC
The codification system of the International Olympic Committee was developed on the basis of the ISO Alpha-3 system, it also consists of three capital Latin letters, but sometimes the codes do not match. The IOC system is used at the Olympic Games and related events
FIFA
Alphabetic codes for abbreviated names of countries and independent territories were developed by the International Football Federation. They are used in soccer championships and other sports associated with the International Football Federation and continental confederations. Like ISO, Alpha-3, and the International Olympic Committee system, FIFA codes consist of three capital letters in Latin.
How are state codes generated?
Abbreviated country names are three (less often two) capital letters in Latin letters. Abbreviations should not be repeated with each other, and should also be as intuitive as possible. Most often, the first letter of the code and the name of the state coincide, in some cases (for example, in the case of Australia), the two or three first letters in the name of the country are used as a code. If the name of the state or independent territory consists of several words, the first letters of each word may be involved in the code. Sometimes the first letters of the syllables in the name are used.
