[updated 2014-06-29]
I recently had to add a country selection list on a form on the website of a customer who does business internationally, and couldn’t find an up-to-date, easy-to-use list of countries already available. The closest was the ISO 3166 country list (HTML version here), but there are a few issues with it in my opinion:
- Country names are all capitalized, which makes them a bit harder to read (UNITED ARAB EMIRATES vs United Arab Emirates for example)
- They list official country names, which can sometimes be quite long even in their “short” version, such as MACEDONIA, THE FORMER YUGOSLAV REPUBLIC OF.
I therefore took their latest list of 249 countries (as of February 2012) and fixed the capitalization/shortened the names of a few countries to more usual ones (e.g. Macedonia instead of MACEDONIA, THE FORMER YUGOSLAV REPUBLIC OF). I did the same with the list of French country names and merged the English and French lists together, resulting in a table with the following 3 columns:
- ISO 3166 country code
- English Name
- French Name
These are free for everyone to download and redistribute. I hope it saves you some time.
Downloads – files last updated 2014-06-29
ISO 3166 country code/country name list – Excel format
ISO 3166 country code/country name list – CSV format
ISO 3166 country code/country name list – SQL format (creates an InnoDB table named countries with MySQL syntax)
Thanks for this list it saved me a load of time.
You’re welecome!
Saved me some time, too. Thanks.
A note: Côte d’Ivoire is incomplete in the spreadsheet. Everything after “d” is missing.
Good catch! I fixed it.
Nice files, thanks, but the CSV has two lines that failed (quotes export problem):
CI,”Côte D'”,”Côte d”
LA,”Lao People”,Laos
Thanks for reporting these errors! I just updated the CSV file accordingly.
Thank you very much. This saves a lot of time.
Thanks, it was very helpful. And the first result in google when I searched “country list csv”
Glad it helped!
Thank you. Saved me a lot of time
Thanks man, this is a great time saver. You are a great helper
Thank you!
Thanks a lot 🙂
Good job. Saves lot of time. Is it possible for you the add 2 and 3 character ISO code?
i.e
Aruba/AA/AW/ABW
Thanks so much for this. But can you make the sql format in *.sql instead of the *.txt. This will help people viewing from mobile phones to download it instead for it to open in their browser. Thanks
Thank you very much, wish you had currency too
Thank you very much…
This is awesome! Thank you very much!!!
Thank you Andy, you’ve saved me tons of time!!
Sorry Pierre-Luc, I meant to thank you and not Andy (whoever he is!)
Glad it helped!
Merci beaucoup Pierre !
Great list thank you, but you’re missing Kosovo.
My list is based on the ISO 3166 list at https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#search and that list does not include Kosovo, due to its disputed independent status I guess (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo). Feel free to add it to your version of the list if you’d like. Thanks!
A lot of miss spells and I don’t like it that you added your own flavour of naming, sorry can’t be used
You’re free to use other lists if you prefer. That being said, if you want to point out any misspelling in the list, please do. Thanks.
Thank You!
You have a very bad example on you intro text.
There is no country named Macedonia. They are called FYROM.
Macedonia is an ancient Greek empire. They cannot call themselves Macedonias for the same reason that Egyptians or Syrians don’t.
The international community does not recognize a country by that name and you should not use it to describe this country.
Thank you!
Thanks for your feedback. I tried to use usual names and the CIA Factbook, among other sources, does refer to FYROM/Macedonia as Macedonia: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/mk.html
If you want to change that in your own version of the list, don’t hesitate to do so, though!
This is great but I’m looking for a list of countries in native language and script for similar globalisation project- any ideas?
Unfortunately not, but if you find one, feel free to post it here (in the comments) in case it helps other people looking for the same thing. Thanks!
Many thanks Pierre-Luc,
Saved me heaps of time.
Much appreciated.
Cheers with a 🙂
Rudy
Glad it helped!
Thank you very much for providing this list. I thought I was going to have to do it manually, but you have shortened my development time. b(^^)d
Glad it helped and thanks for the mention on your blog!
Had to thank you for this, you made my day 🙂
Greatly appreciated!
Glad I could help!
Many thanks for compiling this list, Pierre-Luc. This is a very valuable ressource!
Great.
Thank you!
Thanks! Saved me tons of time.
Many thanks… Saved me a fair amount of time!
Great! Thank you!
Thanks, very useful!
Absolutely first class. Well done baby! Created a MYSQL table in seconds. Seconds..thank you
Very helpful.
Thank you very much!
Many thanks, great list! Just in case it helps anyone else I also wanted to find a selection of flags for my website and found them here http://flagpedia.net/download
Thought this job would be a nightmare and got all I needed in about 2 minutes 🙂
Great – thanks for the link!
Thank you so much
Thank you very much indeed, great and helpful job. Wish I could easily find rivers, towns and other lists alike.
Thanks saved a ton of time.
Thank you SOOOOOOO MUCH!!!!
Useful, as I am combining data from multiple databases, including one in France, and only just noticed the country differences. With this, will make a Global Reporting country field (using the English version since that data outnumbers all the others) and keep both.