Olympic country codes

Probably the best known country codes come from the International Olympic Committee (IOC). These codes appear on our TVs during all Olympic games and also at most international matches, e.g., in soccer, handball and basketball. FIFA and most other sports federations use them — even when the sports are not Olympic disciplines at all. However, the IOC codes differ from those of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and this regularly causes confusion.

ISO country codes

The International Organization for Standardization defines its country codes in standard 3166-1. ISO codes also consist of three capital letters in the alpha-3 version. For example, Germany has the IOC code “GER” for the English country name “Germany.” However, the three-letter ISO code is “DEU” is abbreviated from the German name “Deutschland.” So, although ISO is an international organization, it occasionally uses the national language to derive the abbreviations. This is not always the case: the country code for Austria (the national language is also German) is “AUT,” based on the English “Austria.”

The International Organization for Standardization has other country codes. Somewhat impractical, due to hardly being legible, is the numeric variant, such as 840 for the United States. It is almost only used in information technology, where it is no longer important that the code be human readable. More common for this is the 2-letter code alpha-2. It is mainly used for assigning a country-specific domain. The European IBAN system for bank account numbers also uses this code. It is also often identical to the car license plate.

Currency codes

No codes for currencies appear in the table above, but they also exist. They also consist of three letters according to an always uniform system: First is the two letters of the ISO code (3166-1 alpha-2) and then the first letter of the unit. So for the US Dollar, the letters “US” come first and then an “D” for the dollar follows. The code for the Thai Baht is therefore THB and for the Japanese Yen it is “JPY.”

Again, of course, there are exceptions: Currencies like the euro are not tied to a single country, which is why it was given the abbreviation EUR. And individual countries, such as Mexico, are also treated differently. The Mexican peso should actually has the code MXP in the system, but since a currency reform in 1992, the abbreviation is “MXN.”