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The following list shows the countries of the world, according to international standard ISO 3166-1. Selected standardcodes for the countries are shown. There is also an indication of which entities are or are not independent countries.

Sources and notes:

ISO - The Maintenance Agency for ISO standard 3166 is supported directly by the central secretariat of the ISO in Geneva. It maintainsan authoritative list ofISOAlpha-2 Codes . Its list is coordinated with a list of countries used by the United Nations Statistics Division forreporting purposes. If I understand correctly, the organization that defines ISO Alpha-3 and Numeric Codes is actuallytheU.N. Statistics Division . Here are thechanges since 1982  for those codes. See thechanges in ISO 3166-1 page for the change history. I have also written a page aboutusing ISO 3166-1 in software.

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) administers top-level domain names (.com, .edu, .org, and so on). Themajority of top-level domain names are referred to as ccTLD, or country-code Top Level Domains. They include .fr, .in,etc. URLs with .fr as their top-level domain are supposed to be assigned to French individuals, organizations, andcompanies by a French administrative body. IANA has chosen to use ISO 3166 as a basis for the ccTLDs (see theirlist ), and sticks to it very closely.It does, however, use .uk as well as .gb for the United Kingdom. It also allows .ac for Ascension Island (properly partof Saint Helena).

ITU - A number of Web pages say that the ITU country codes are being used, mostly to identify radio transmitterlocations. TheITU Website  has the list. These should not be confused with several other ITU codes, mostlynumeric, which are used as dialing prefixes (e.g.,ITU-TRecommendation E.164 ). The ITU code for Serbia and Montenegro recently changed fromYUG toSCG. See also "Dialing codes", below.

GEC - TheGEC  page has anofficial U.S. government listing of codes. See thechanges in GEC page for the changehistory. Eric Muller has created awebsite that keeps track of changes in the GEC codes for primary subdivisions.

The GEC country list differs from ISO 3166 in many minor and sometimes surprising ways. It has assigned separatecodes to Bassas da India (BS), Europa Island (EU), Glorioso Islands (GO), Juan de Nova Island (JU), and Tromelin Island(TE), tiny and mostly uninhabited Indian Ocean islands administered with the French Southern Territories; also, Ashmoreand Cartier Islands (AT) and Coral Sea Islands (CR), Australian territories; and Clipperton Island (IP), which isadministered from French Polynesia. It splits Svalbard and Jan Mayen Islands into twocountries (JN and SV).a It shows United States Minor Outlying Islands as nine countries:Baker Island (FQ), Howland Island (HQ), Jarvis Island (DQ), Johnston Atoll (JQ), Kingman Reef (KQ), Midway Islands (MQ),Navassa Island (BQ), Palmyra Atoll (LQ), and Wake Island (WQ). It treats Palestine as the Gaza Strip (GZ) plus the WestBank (WE); also, a code is assigned to No Man's Land (NM), a small and winding band of neutral territory near Jerusalem.Since Kosovo declared independence, it has treated Serbia as Serbia proper (RI) plus Kosovo (KV). The 2004 edition of theCIA World Factbook explains why it has added country listings for Akrotiri and Dhekelia, two British military bases inCyprus. They were assigned the GEC codes AX and DX, respectively, by FIPS Change Notice 12, dated 2007-06-11. At thesame time, codes were added for the Southern Kuril Islands (a.k.a. Hoppo Ryodo) (PJ) and areas of undesignated sovereignty(UU), which overlaps with some other codes. The UU code was revoked in 2010-04 with the changeover to Geopolitical Entitiesand Codes. Finally, GEC allocates codes to the Paracel (PF) and Spratly (PG) Islands, two island groups in the South ChinaSea that are claimed by every country within shooting distance; ISO 3166 is noncommittal about the Paracels and Spratlys.When ISO split Åland from Finland, GEC did not, so that is one more point of difference between them. The newer GENCstandard has retained these variations, but uses ISO-like codes.

IOC - The International Olympics Committee code for Yugoslavia changed from YUG to SCG at about the same time as theISO Alpha-3 code. Faroe Islands didn't compete in the 2004 Olympics, but in the Paralympic Games they were identified by FROrather than the former code, FAR. The code for Trinidad and Tobago changed from TRI to TTO in 2014.

FIFA - The FIFA (soccer) codes are taken from theFIFAwebsite , with supplemental codes as shown inWikipedia . There are acouple of discrepancies between the two sources. Notes:1 The United Kingdom is coveredby several codes:ENG (England),NIR (Northern Ireland),SCO (Scotland), andWAL (Wales).2 Represents Tahiti.3Represents Ross Dependency.

DS - Have you ever wondered about those white oval stickers on cars, with a country code in them? They are providedfor by Article 20 of theConvention onRoad Traffic  (Geneva, 1949). Therein, they are called "distinguishing signs of the placeof registration" of vehicles. There's a list of them on thisUnited Nations Economic Commission forEurope  page. However, some of the codes reported there are not the ones in actual use,because some countries are lax in reporting their codes to the U.N. Secretary General. Neil Parker, John Weeks, and RegWilson (of Europlate), in their book "Registration Plates of the World" (ISBN 0-9502735-6-2 paperback, 0-9502735-7-0hardback), list the codes actually being used on vehicles. That list (as sent to me by Mr. Parker) is the primary sourceof the data given in the table above.

In recent years, unauthorized stickers have come on the market to promote various tourist areas. One of theearliest was MV for Martha's Vineyard. Besides, when a code changes (e.g. Faroe Islands changed from FR toFO in the mid-1990s), the old stickers don't disappear in a flash. Consequently, even direct observationmay not be sufficient to establish the correct Distinguishing Sign for a country.

A Wikipedia user in Uruguay, MauriManya, says that the Distinguishing Sign for Uruguay has changed to UY "al adoptar elsistema unificado en todo el país" (on the adoption of a unified system throughout the country).

The list of countries by Distinguishing Sign is a bit different from the ISO 3166 country list. Instead ofTanzania, there are Tanganyika (EAT) and Zanzibar (EAZ), dating back to before 1964 when the two countriesunited. There is even a code for Alderney (GBA), which is a dependency of Guernsey.

GAUL - GAUL is a relatively new initiative from the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization), a specialized agencyof the U.N. It aims to codify all the world's statoids and their changes, from about 1990 on. So far it has developed datafor countries, primary, and secondary divisions, including boundary data and entity codes. The entity codes are integers,assigned sequentially, with no duplication between layers; that is, no country has the same code as any primary subdivision,and so on. When an entity splits or merges, its code is dropped and new codes are created. However, the codes for itssubdivisions remain the same. Therefore, there is no permanent relationship between the codes for an entity and those forits subdivisions; the system is not hierarchical. A revised set of codes is released annually. Some information about GAULis atDescription ,PDF document ,Presentation , andList of codes .

MARC - MARC is a standard for encoding bibliographic materials in electronic form. The Library of Congress maintainstheMARC code list for countries .For background on MARC and a list of country code changes, see thechanges in MARC page.In general, MARC country codes are two letters. For three countries, MARC provides three-letter subdivision codes.In these cases, the first two letters represent the state or province, and the third letter indicates the country.If the first two letters arexx, the code represents a location in an unspecified subdivision of thatcountry.b There are five MARC codes that represent parts of United States Minor OutlyingIslands:ji Johnston Atoll,xf Midway Islands,wk Wake Island,ucUnited States Misc. Caribbean Islands, andup United States Misc. Pacific Islands.

Dialing codes - In most places that allow direct-dialed international calls, you must first dial an internationalaccess code. For that reason, the E.164 country codes are often printed with a plus sign prefixed, as in +44-01632-496123.In the U.S., the international access code is 011, so you would dial 01144, etc., to reach that number.n Ascension Island's code is247.pKosovo has been given the code383, to take effect "by 2015".

The digits of a telephone number following the country code often have a geographical significance, and are often calledarea codes. Some lists of area codes for different countries can be found online. Here are a few such sites. All of theselinks are to other websites.

Country	Codes
International	Codes
Bangladesh	Codes
Canada	Codes
India	CodesCodes
Lithuania	Codes
Madagascar	Codes
Russia	Codes
Tajikistan	Codes
USA	CodesCodes

Misc. - The Educational Testing Service has a set of three-digit country codes in aPDF file .

The U.S. Census Bureau has a set of four-digit country codes -Schedule C  - foruse in reporting trade statistics. The (PDF file)AID GeographicCode Book  lists region and country codes used by the U.S. Agency for InternationalDevelopment, along with GEC codes.

There are NATO standards called STANAG (for STANdardization AGreement), used to communicate military information amongNATO members.STANAG 1059 is used for countries and other regions. The country codes are based closely on the ISO Alpha-3 codes. The Stanag codefor Macedonia isFYR instead ofMKD; almost all of the others are the same.

The history of STANAG 1059 is hard to track. Its first Wikipedia entry was made in 2004, and referenced a seventh editiondated 2000 and an eighth edition dated 2003. The eighth edition became effective on 2004-04-01. The ninth edition appearedin draft form in 2005. A tenth edition was planned, but I can't find it online. The first seven editions were closely basedon FIPS 10-4 two-letter country codes. The eighth edition added ISO two- and three-letter country codes. It also listedprimary subdivisions, with their ISO 3166-2 and FIPS 10-4 codes. All FIPS codes in this document are deprecated.

Eurostat, the statistical agency of the European Union, has modified the ISO 3166-1 standard to create its ownGeonomenclature ,or GEONOM for short. These codes are intended to be used in compiling external trade statistics for EU countries.

CountryCodes.CO , a website devoted to code lookups,has several codes not listed here.

All the nations you have made will come and worship before you, Lord; they will bring glory to your name. - Ps. lxxxvi:9.