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Linking Tables Without ISO Codes

Linking tables without ISO codes -- This page will link to lookup tables designed to facilitate linking at the country level between data bases from different organizations which use non-ISO codes or databases where there there are country names but no country codes.  The table also includes a list of World Bank three character codes for various groupings of countries used by the bank (for example Low Income Countries  LIC). The main lookup table "country_list" has the same structure as the "ISOlink" table:

• COUNTRY--The country name-- this field is for information only and should not be used in trying to link the data. The names are combination of UN and ISO usage.
• ISO3--This is the three character alphabet code.
• ISO2--This is the ISO two character alphabet code
• ISON-- This is the three character numerical code with leading zeros and is in text format.
• ISON_T--This is the text version of ISON without leading zeroes and will be on the left hand side of a spreadsheet cell.
• ISON_N-- This is the numerical version of ISON without leading zeroes and will be on the right hand side in a spreadsheet cell.

However, in this case the "COUNTRY" field is made up of a collection of country names with different spellings collected from data downloads generated for a number of UN and other organizations as well as country groupings used by the World Bank. This list is not comprehensive in that it doesn't include all the possible variations of a country name (including misspellings) but does include variations from a number of the more popular data download sites. It includes the UNDP data in which a hard space is inserted before the country name.  This table is used by linking the country name in the downloaded data with the COUNTRY field in "country_list, this will provide at least a preliminary list of country names and their associated ISO codes. It may be necessary to fill in the blanks manually, but the downloaded "country_list" table can be updated to include alternative country name spellings by the user. The table can be downloaded at COUNTRIES_LU. This table was updated 21 May 2019. It includes multiple variations for the spelling of some country names,including obvious misspellings. New spelling variants used in downloadable databases are added when they are discovered.

Special Cases--Individual lookup tables are also provided for special cases-- data downloads from important sites which have their own codes. In these cases the data from "country_list" will be attached to the country name and code produced by each of the organizations.

And the following tables for specific organizations:

• FAO
• US Census Bureau

These tables are available here.

FAO--The FAO country list table has been copied from http://www.fao.org/countryprofiles/iso3list/en/ The list was not made to be down-loaded and was copied by selecting the whole list and pasting to a spreadsheet. The column headings are:

• Short Name
• Official Name
• ISO3
• ISO2
• UNI--United Nations country code
• UNDP--ISO3
• FAOSTAT--Country code used by the main FAO database.
• GAUL--Global Administrative Unit Layers-- this is a code use for geographic information and is explained in detail at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Administrative_Unit_Layers

The table can be downloaded in xls format at FAO_LU.

USCB-- The US Census Bureau has developed its own code and also publishes the ISO2 code. The list is available at https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/schdules/countrycode.html . The column headings are:

• Name--Country Name
• Country Code-- The USCB country code
• ISO Code--The ISO 2 character code.

A text version of the list was downloaded from https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/schedules/c/country.txt and converted to xls spreadsheet format. The file can be downloaded at USCB_LU.