[Gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5] Action for WT5 Members - Definition of Geographic Terms

[Jaap Akkerhuis]

 Nick Wenban-Smith writes:

 > I had thought that the first piece of work for WT5 is a discussion of
 > the definition of what constitutes a geographic name for the purposes
 > of new gTLDs - hence looking initially at the 2012 Applicant Guidebook
 > collectively to see whether those are fit for purpose. The use of 3166
 > - the standard for codes for the representation of countries and their
 > subdivisions - is not perfect but has historically always been used as
 > reference going right back to RFC 1591 in 1994 "IANA is not in the
 > business of deciding what is and what is not a country".
 >
 >
 > Personally while I think use of 3166 produces some odd results I have
 > not (yet) heard of a credible alternative as regards country names and
 > the 2 and 3 letter codes which represent country names.

The ISO 3166 standard is not about country names at all. It does not
defines the names of countries. It is all about codes. What RFC 1591
refers to is the use of codes as labels for TLDs. When the standard is
using names and takes the UN Terminology database [1] as reference for
those names. It is a bad idea to use 3166 as a reference source for
geographic names.


	jaap


[1] <https://unterm.un.org/UNTERM/portal/welcome>