GeoNames Forum

The country names listed in the file countryInfo.txt aren't ISO 3166-1 (official short names in English). Are these names coming from some other standard? I find 27 differences: (the left hand column comes from countryInfo.txt and the right hand column comes from the ISO website, http://www.iso.org/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma)

Aland Islands | Åland Islands
Brunei | Brunei Darussalam
Congo (Kinshasa) | Congo, the Democratic Republic of the
Congo (Brazzaville) | Congo
Ivory Coast | Côte d'Ivoire
Falkland Islands | Falkland Islands (Malvinas)
Micronesia | Micronesia, Federated States of
Hong Kong S.A.R., China | Hong Kong
Iran | Iran, Islamic Republic of
North Korea | Korea, Democratic People's Republic of
South Korea | Korea, Republic of
Laos | Lao People's Democratic Republic
Libya | Libyan Arab Jamahiriya
Moldova | Moldova, Republic of
Macedonia | Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of
Macao S.A.R., China | Macao
Palestinian Territory | Palestinian Territory, Occupied
Reunion | Réunion
Russia | Russian Federation
Syria | Syrian Arab Republic
East Timor | Timor-Leste
Taiwan | Taiwan, Province of China
Tanzania | Tanzania, United Republic of
Vatican | Holy See (Vatican City State)
British Virgin Islands | Virgin Islands, British
U.S. Virgin Islands | Virgin Islands, U.S.
Vietnam | Viet Nam

Thank you for considering this matter.

Regards,

Dan

Hi Dan

Geonames is using a lot of sources to support place names in over 200 languages.
Among the sources are iso, nga, wikipedia, geonames contributors, the UN or unicode.
Unicode is an important source for country names :

http://unicode.org/
http://unicode.org/cldr/repository/common/main/en.xml?rev=HEAD&content-type=text/xml

Cheers

Marc