[Pkg-isocodes-devel] Common names for countries in ISO 3166_1

[Yan Wong]

I've been trying to match names from online databases to official country codes. I'm not sure what is the criteria for inclusion of a "common name" in the ISO 3166-1 database (e.g. name="Bolivia, Plurinational State of" has an associated common_name="Bolivia", but name="Iran, Islamic Republic of", doesn't have common_name="Iran".

Here's a list of the common names that I think would be useful for matching purposes, none of which are present in the current file. If any of these seem reasonable additions, I wonder how difficult it would be to add them?

name="Iran, Islamic Republic of": common_name="Iran"
name="Tanzania, United Republic of": common_name="Tanzania"
name="Russian Federation": common_name="Russia"
name="Brunei Darussalam": common_name="Brunei"
name="Lao People's Democratic Republic": common_name="Laos"
name="Syrian Arab Republic": common_name="Syria"
name="Macedonia, Republic of": common_name="Macedonia"
name="Viet Nam": common_name="Vietnam"
also

name="United Kingdom": common_name="UK"
name="United States": common_name="USA"

and more controversially

name="Korea, Democratic People's Republic of": common_name: "North Korea"
name="Korea, Republic of": common_name: "South Korea"

Cheers

Yan