ISO 3166-1

Codes for 249 countries, territories, or areas of geographical interest are assigned in ISO 3166-1.

The ISO 3166/MA may reserve code elements for other entities that do not qualify for inclusion based on the above criteria.

[5] For this reason, common components of country names like "Republic", "Kingdom", "United", "Federal" or "Democratic" are normally not used for deriving the code elements.

For example, Germany is assigned the alpha-2 code DE, based on its native name "Deutschland".

Codes are usually reserved for former countries, overseas territories, international organizations, and special nationality status.

A country is normally assigned new ISO 3166-1 codes if it changes its name or its territorial boundaries.

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The International Organization for Standardization uses the country names chosen by the United Nations , some of which are disputed.