From: Doug Ewell (dewell@adelphia.net)
Date: Mon Dec 15 2003 - 16:04:08 EST
Philippe Verdy <verdy underscore p at wanadoo dot fr> wrote:
>> Please, please let the ISO 3166/MA not get sucked into this one.
>
> That's not ISO 3166/MA that assigns official country names.
>
> ISO 3166/MA just uses the official country list from the United
> Nations, which is simply updating its registration for country members
> by their official diplomatic representant. So the names are directly
> those claimed and controled by governments of each country, and ISO
> 3366/MA has NO decision power there:
> ...
> All what ISO3166/MA will control is the assignment of 2-letter and
> 3-letter country _codes_ (but not numeric country codes assigned by
> the UN in its Statistics Bureau).
If one or both Koreas decide they want their English name to be spelled
with a C, for whatever reason, then of course ISO 3166/MA will need to
update the names. The "sucking" I was referring to (in more than one
sense) was the perceived need to replace the codes KP and KR (and PRK
and KOR) with new codes that incorporate the C.
ISO 3166-1 provides codes for the names of countries. I don't think
that implies any requirement to keep the names mnemonic, even to the
point of sacrificing stability -- but I guess that's where the MA and I
part company.
-Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California
http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Dec 15 2003 - 16:50:25 EST