Why is the United Kingdom (of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) coded GB in ISO 3166-1?
The codes in ISO 3166-1 are – wherever possible – chosen to reflect the significant, unique component of the country name in order to allow a visual association between country name and country code. Since name components like Republic, Kingdom, United, Federal or Democratic are used very often in country names we usually do not derive the country code elements from them in order to avoid ambiguity. The name components United and Kingdom not being approriate for ISO 3166-1, the code GB for the United Kingdom was created from Great Britain. Incidently, GB is also the United Kingdom’s international road vehicle distinguishing sign – the code on the oval nationality stickers on cars.
The codes in ISO 3166-1 are – wherever possible – chosen to reflect the significant, unique component of the country name in order to allow a visual association between country name and country code. Since name components like Republic, Kingdom, United, Federal or Democratic are used very often in country names we usually do not derive the country code elements from them in order to avoid ambiguity. The name components United and Kingdom are not appropriate for ISO 3166-1. Therefore the code “GB” was created from Great Britain and not “UK” for United Kingdom. Incidently, GB is also the United Kingdom’s international road vehicle distinguishing sign – the code on the oval nationality stickers on cars.
