Subject: Re: [BoundaryPoint] Plate Tectonics and Lat/Long boundaries<br/>
Date: Nov 13, 2003 @ 13:06<br/>
Author: Kevin Meynell (Kevin Meynell &lt;knm@...&gt;)<br/>
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<br/><br/>
<div id="ygrps-yiv-1471547526">Eric,<br/>
<br/>
<blockquote><span title="ireply"> &gt;Is it the two letter codes used for web addresses in English alphabetical <br/>
&gt;order? And on another note, if Croatia&#39;s abbriviation HR is derived from <br/>
&gt;its name in Croatian, why then is Hungary&#39;s HU not derived from Magyarország?<br/>
<br/>
 </span></blockquote>ISO 3166-1 country and territory codes are generally based on the English <br/>
short name, except where those territories have French as the official <br/>
language (in most cases the name is the same anyway). Germany and <br/>
Switzerland probably got codes based on their local names because they <br/>
happened to be represented on the original working group that made the <br/>
first list.<br/>
<br/>
In the event that the obvious two-letter combination for a country is <br/>
already taken or could apply to more than one country, it&#39;s based on the <br/>
local name if possible (hence &#39;HR&#39; for Hrvatska). It has nevertheless still <br/>
been necessary to introduce a few weird combinations such as &#39;KY&#39; for the <br/>
Cayman Islands, &#39;KM&#39; for Comoros, and &#39;CX&#39; for Christmas Island.<br/>
<br/>
The codes for the three-part ISO 3166 standard are determined by a <br/>
ten-member maintenance agency comprising the standards bodies of France <br/>
(AFNOR), Germany (DIN), Sweden (SIS), the UK (BSI) and the USA (ANSI), plus <br/>
the International Atomic Energy Authority, the International <br/>
Telecommunications Union, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and <br/>
Numbers, the Universal Postal Union and the UN Economic Commission for Europe.<br/>
<br/>
Incidentally, the recent approval of &#39;CS&#39; as the new code for Serbia and <br/>
Montenegro has caused a huge row as it was formerly used for <br/>
Czechoslovakia. Apparently many references to it still exist, and it seems <br/>
likely that it&#39;ll have to be withdrawn.<br/>
<br/>
Regards,<br/>
<br/>
Kevin Meynell</div>