Gregory's Server
There are few better ways to enjoy the weekend than with a #geoweirdness thread.
Today let's talk about deleted ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes.
Some background: ISO codes are the two letter codes
commonly used to represent countries. For example
DE for 🇩🇪 Germany (Deutschland), FR for 🇫🇷 France, MX for 🇲🇽 Mexico, etc
"ISO" stands for International Organization for Standardization, the
international body that assigns the codes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Organization_for_Standardization
1/
2/ For historical reasons many territories have their own ISO codes, despite being part of another country.
An example is 🇵🇷 Puerto Rico (PR) which is part of the 🇺🇸 United States (US)
The process of assigning codes is not quick, it may be some time before a "new" country has an official code. 🇽🇰 Kosovo , recognized by 98 UN member states, does not yet have an official ISO code.
This is why our API returns both ISO codes and a "country_code" field
See: https://opencagedata.com/guides/how-to-determine-the-iso-codes-for-a-location
#geoweirdness
2/ For historical reasons many territories have their own ISO codes, despite being part of another country.
An example is 🇵🇷 Puerto Rico (PR) which is part of the 🇺🇸 United States (US)
The process of assigning codes is not quick, it may be some time before a "new" country has an official code. 🇽🇰 Kosovo , recognized by 98 UN member states, does not yet have an official ISO code.