Subject: Re: [BoundaryPoint] ukc<br/>
Date: Jan 20, 2003 @ 11:33<br/>
Author: Kevin Meynell (Kevin Meynell &lt;kevin@...&gt;)<br/>
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<div id="ygrps-yiv-1089494126"><blockquote><span title="ireply">&gt;for i dont think uk is proper iso for anything<br/>
<br/>
 </span></blockquote>This is a difficult one. The ISO 3166-1 standard requires that alpha codes <br/>
reflect a unique component of the country name, which means that prefixes <br/>
such as &#39;Kingdom&#39; or &#39;Republic&#39; are generally not permitted. As a result <br/>
&#39;GB&#39; was chosen, although it rather confusingly stands for &#39;Great Britain <br/>
and Northern Ireland&#39;.<br/>
<br/>
However, it&#39;s also possible for countries to ask for certain codes to be <br/>
included in the ISO 3166 reserved list which means they can&#39;t be allocated <br/>
to someone else. The UK requested that a whole host of codes be reserved <br/>
(mostly for its overseas territories), but this included &#39;UK&#39;. France <br/>
(mainland), Spain (Ceuta/Melilla and the Canary Islands) and Finland (Åland <br/>
Islands) did something similar.<br/>
<br/>
The UK code was never officially used until the Internet came along, when <br/>
for some reason, IANA (the US government agency that delegates top-level <br/>
domains) decided to delegate .uk instead of .gb (.gb was actually delegated <br/>
as well, but never used). The retrospective explanation was that IANA did <br/>
not adopt ISO 3166-1 until after .uk was delegated, but this does not <br/>
explain why they subsequently delegated .ac (Ascension), .gg (Guernsey), <br/>
.je (Jersey) and .im (Isle of Man) which were and still are only reserved <br/>
codes. In other words, it was probably a mistake made by the US Government.<br/>
<br/>
Thanks to the Internet, most people now seem to use &#39;UK&#39; as the country <br/>
code when referring to Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but this is only <br/>
a very recent phenomena and is technically incorrect. However, I personally <br/>
feel it makes things clearer as I don&#39;t know of any other &#39;United Kingdoms&#39; <br/>
in the same way that I don&#39;t know of any other &#39;United States&#39; (although I <br/>
stand to be corrected).<br/>
<br/>
The usual apologies for being slightly off-topic, but hopefully it <br/>
clarifies Mike&#39;s point.<br/>
<br/>
Regards,<br/>
<br/>
Kevin Meynell</div>