sse-results

Countries

Nationalities published by this project use 3 character abbreviations from 3 different organisations:

• International Organization for Standardization
• International Olympic Committee
• World Sailing Organisation

The organisations are summarised below, followed by a brief explanation of how the abbreviation is chosen for each country.

Organisations

International Organization for Standardization

International Organization for Standardization created and maintains a list of codes for the representation of countries and their subdivisions.

These codes are officially known as ISO 3166-1 Codes.

They are three sets of ISO 3166-1 codes; two-letter codes, three-letter codes and numeric codes. There are codes for 249 countries, dependent territories, and special areas of geographical interest.

International Olympic Committee

The codes used by the International Olympic Committee are probably more familiar to the wider public than ISO 3166-1 codes.

These codes are commonly known as IOC codes.

There are 206 current NOCs (National Olympic Committees) within the Olympic Movement.

e.g. The IOC country code for Germany is “GER” which differs from the ISO codes of “DEU” and “DE”.

World Sailing Organisation

The World Sailing Organisation use codes derived from the International Olympic Committee.

These codes are known as Member National Authority codes; MNA codes.

There are 146 current Member National Authorities with a 3-letter code assigned.

A few notes about the list of MNA codes:

• Taiwan (“TWN” in ISO 3166-1) is referred to as Chinese Taipei (“TPE”) by the IOC and WSO.
• Netherland Antilles (Curacao and St Maarten) have a joint MNA code of “AHO” but different codes in ISO 3166-1; “CUW” and “SXM”.
• There are currently 3 countries with an MNA code that is different to the latest IOC code; “Iran”, “Lebanon” and “Nigeria”.
• There are currently 3 countries with an MNA code but no IOC code; “Montserrat”, “Tahiti” and “Turks and Caicos Islands”.

Weymouth Speed Week

The results for Weymouth Speed Week prioritise country codes as follows:

1. MNA Code - World Sailing Organisation.
2. IOC Code - International Olympic Committee.
3. ISO 3166-1 Code - International Organization for Standardization.

A few tweaks have been made after applying the above priories since the ISO 3166-1 code may be confusing:

• Guernsey; “GSY “instead of “GGY”.
  • n.b. “GB-GSY” used to be assigned to Guernsey in ISO 3166-2.
• Jersey; “JSY “instead of “JEY”.
  • n.b. “GB-JSY” used to be assigned to Jersey in ISO 3166-2.
• Western Sahara; “WSH “instead of “ESH”.
  • It’s not clear why ISO 3166-1 uses the letter “E” rather than “W”.

Note: This project recognises 251 countries in total. This is 2 more than the 249 countries currently listed in ISO 3166-1.

• Kosovo has been added from the International Olympic Committee’s list of “National Olympic Committees”.
• Tahiti has been added from the World Sailing Organisation’s list of “Member National Authorities”.

The logic described in this document may appear to be overkill but it has been done this way for the benefit of future projects.

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