Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Right, but confusingly, GB is the ISO 2 code for the United Kingdom, even though the United Kingdom is much bigger than Great Britain, where the GB abbreviation comes from.


Pet hate: Regularly running into dropdowns that list countries by name, but sort them by country code.


Thanks for explaining where that apparently random ordering comes from - drives me nuts too!


At least for the identification sticker / stripe on cars we've moved from GB to UK. Maybe we'll just move to uk as the ISO 2 letter code.


https://web.archive.org/web/20120616044022/http://www.iso.or...

Apparently "United" and "Kingdom" aren't valid for ISO, so they went with ignoring part of the name completely.


That’s interesting. It kind of makes sense. I guess the US makes this rule kind of funny too. I guess we’re lucky we didn’t get .am for “America.”


IVR codes are not ISO 3166-1 codes. The ISO codes are all two letters; the IVR codes range from one to three letters.


Makes sense, also in keeping with the excessively complicated naming that thousands of years of dispute produces.




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2026 batch! Applications are open till July 27.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: