4 ms·

GB is the correct ISO country code for Great Britain.

dmurray 4y ago
I would not be confident in postal systems routing letters based on ISO country codes. If you send your letter in Tennessee with AR at the bottom of it, it's going to Arkansas or nowhere, not Argentina.
- zinekeller 4y ago
  Yes, there are actually standard postal country names assigned jointly by the country concerned and UPU (the organisation that manages how mail works globally). For example, the correct country name for ISO GB is "UNITED KINGDOM" (https://www.upu.int/UPU/media/upu/PostalEntitiesFiles/addressingUnit/gbrEn.pdf https://www.upu.int/UPU/media/upu/PostalEntitiesFiles/addres...) Pedantic: actually, there are (up to) two valid postal country names: the English one (UNITED KINGDOM) and the French one (ROYAUME-UNI, https://www.upu.int/UPU/media/upu/PostalEntitiesFiles/addressingUnit/gbrFr.pdf https://www.upu.int/UPU/media/upu/PostalEntitiesFiles/addres...). This is due to historical reasons: (jointly) Britain and the US (which use English) were the most advanced in postal services but the diplomatic language at the time is French.
reaperducer 4y ago
GB is the correct ISO country code for Great Britain But is the mail in the source country sorted by people, computers programmed by people, or by the ISO committee?
cassianoleal 4y ago
Funny, since Great Britain is not a country.
ClapperHeid 4y ago
But eph is right. All addresses in "Norn Iron" have a UK postcode, beginning BT [for Belfast]. So while a letter addressed to... Someone BTXX XXX GB ...would probably get there, it would technically be incorrect. Mind you... Someone BTXX XXX UK ...might not get there either, if your postie was a dyed-in-the-wool republican!
Karellen 4y ago
That always trips a lot of people up because .uk is the country-code top-level domain for Great Britain, and cctlds are assigned using the 2-letter ISO country code for that country. ...except for Great Britain, who were one of the first few other countries to be connected to the internet, and decided to use .uk before people realised that every country would need one, and using already-assigned ISO codes would be the best way to hand them out.
- peteri 4y ago
  Partially this is because the Joint Academic NETwork (JANET) in the uk used addresses in the form of xyz@uk.ac.qmc.cs according to wikipedia the JANET NRS had uk as the top level prior to dns adopting ISO codes in 1984 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JANET_NRS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JANET_NRS
- netsharc 4y ago
  Huh? The country is called "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland", or the UK for short. Strictly speaking, if you talk about Great Britain, you're excluding Northern Ireland, but politically GB isn't a country... Wikipedia says "Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean", although historically there was also the Kingdom of Great Britain.
  - Karellen 4y ago
    Well, go complain to ISO then, not me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_3166_country_codes#UNI2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_3166_country_codes... Edit: Also, if you've ever seen UK teams compete in international sports, all their athletes have "GBR" on their team uniforms.
    - zinekeller 4y ago
      Yeah, GP is shooting the messenger. If the GP is reading this, here is the address of the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency: ISO 3166-1:2020: Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions — Part 1: Country code ISO 3166-2:2020: Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions — Part 2: Country subdivision code ISO 3166-3:2020: Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions — Part 3: Code for formerly used names of countries Maintenance Agency ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency c/o ISO Central Secretariat BIBC II Chemin de Blandonnet 8 1214 Vernier Switzerland Tel: +41 22 749 01 11 E-mail: customerservice@iso.org Website: www.iso.org/mara/iso3166

I would not be confident in postal systems routing letters based on ISO country codes. If you send your letter in Tennessee with AR at the bottom of it, it's going to Arkansas or nowhere, not Argentina.

zinekeller 4y ago
Yes, there are actually standard postal country names assigned jointly by the country concerned and UPU (the organisation that manages how mail works globally). For example, the correct country name for ISO GB is "UNITED KINGDOM" (https://www.upu.int/UPU/media/upu/PostalEntitiesFiles/addressingUnit/gbrEn.pdf https://www.upu.int/UPU/media/upu/PostalEntitiesFiles/addres...) Pedantic: actually, there are (up to) two valid postal country names: the English one (UNITED KINGDOM) and the French one (ROYAUME-UNI, https://www.upu.int/UPU/media/upu/PostalEntitiesFiles/addressingUnit/gbrFr.pdf https://www.upu.int/UPU/media/upu/PostalEntitiesFiles/addres...). This is due to historical reasons: (jointly) Britain and the US (which use English) were the most advanced in postal services but the diplomatic language at the time is French.

reaperducer 4y ago

GB is the correct ISO country code for Great Britain But is the mail in the source country sorted by people, computers programmed by people, or by the ISO committee?

cassianoleal 4y ago

Funny, since Great Britain is not a country.

ClapperHeid 4y ago

But eph is right. All addresses in "Norn Iron" have a UK postcode, beginning BT [for Belfast]. So while a letter addressed to... Someone BTXX XXX GB ...would probably get there, it would technically be incorrect. Mind you... Someone BTXX XXX UK ...might not get there either, if your postie was a dyed-in-the-wool republican!

Karellen 4y ago

That always trips a lot of people up because .uk is the country-code top-level domain for Great Britain, and cctlds are assigned using the 2-letter ISO country code for that country. ...except for Great Britain, who were one of the first few other countries to be connected to the internet, and decided to use .uk before people realised that every country would need one, and using already-assigned ISO codes would be the best way to hand them out.

peteri 4y ago
Partially this is because the Joint Academic NETwork (JANET) in the uk used addresses in the form of xyz@uk.ac.qmc.cs according to wikipedia the JANET NRS had uk as the top level prior to dns adopting ISO codes in 1984 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JANET_NRS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JANET_NRS
netsharc 4y ago
Huh? The country is called "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland", or the UK for short. Strictly speaking, if you talk about Great Britain, you're excluding Northern Ireland, but politically GB isn't a country... Wikipedia says "Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean", although historically there was also the Kingdom of Great Britain.
- Karellen 4y ago
  Well, go complain to ISO then, not me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_3166_country_codes#UNI2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_3166_country_codes... Edit: Also, if you've ever seen UK teams compete in international sports, all their athletes have "GBR" on their team uniforms.
  - zinekeller 4y ago
    Yeah, GP is shooting the messenger. If the GP is reading this, here is the address of the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency: ISO 3166-1:2020: Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions — Part 1: Country code ISO 3166-2:2020: Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions — Part 2: Country subdivision code ISO 3166-3:2020: Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions — Part 3: Code for formerly used names of countries Maintenance Agency ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency c/o ISO Central Secretariat BIBC II Chemin de Blandonnet 8 1214 Vernier Switzerland Tel: +41 22 749 01 11 E-mail: customerservice@iso.org Website: www.iso.org/mara/iso3166