International place-names

These are the British English-language and Welsh-language names and descriptive terms for sovereign countries, UK Crown Dependencies and UK Overseas Territories. ‘Sovereign’ means that they are independent states, recognised under international law. Official forms and short forms of country names are included, as well as the 2-letter ISO 3166-1 codes for these countries. 

These lists reflect the Geographical Names Index found on the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) website, excluding the last column in that Index ("Citizen names"). Entries for citizen names will be added to the Welsh-language list in due course.

The FCDO has approved the English-language names, working closely with the Permanent Committee on Geographical Names.

The Welsh-language names are the result of a joint standardisation work undertaken by the Welsh Government's Translation Service and the Welsh Language Commissioner's Place-name Standardisation Panel. Standardisation of the Welsh-language forms are based on a set of principles formulated especially for this work. An English translation of the principles is available, entitled Denoting the names of states, territories and stateless nations.The original Welsh-language version is published in the Translation Service's online style guide, Yr Arddulliadur, under the title Dynodi enwau gwladwriaethau, tiriogaethau a chenhedloedd diwladwriaeth. 

Note that the forms may change with time, both in accordance with the principles and in response to decisions to modify the Geographic Names Index. The Welsh Language Commissioner's Office will coordinate modifications and additions to the Welsh-language list.

The names in these lists, and their supporting data, can also be found in TermCymru. In TermCymru you will also find other types of international names, such as names of stateless nations (eg Catalonia) and names of regions or territories related to other sovereign countries (eg Canary Islands; French Guiana).

These CSV files can be added to termbases in translation memory systems. You can download PDF versions of these lists from the pages with the online lists.

All these resources are released under the Open Government Licence (OGL).

These lists were last updated on 01 November 2023.

View an online version of the list of sovereign countries.

View an online version of the list of UK Crown Dependencies.

View an online version of the list of UK Overseas Territories.