Geographical names index
Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office's (FCDO) current list of approved British English-language names for countries and territories.
Documents
Details
These are the current British English-language names and descriptive terms for countriescountries, Crown Dependencies and territories,Overseas Territories, as well as their citizens. These names are approved by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO).
In boththese lists, ‘country’ is the 2-letter ISO 3166-1 code for the country.
The ‘name’ is FCDO’s approved name for the country. This should always be used to describe the country.
The citizen names in the lists aren’t the legal names for the citizen. They don’t relate to the citizen’s ethnicity.
Last updated
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New list added: UK Crown Dependencies.
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Country names file amended: The Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal amended to Nepal
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Country names updated.
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New guidance added on the list of approved British English language names and descriptive terms for countries.
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Country names updated
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Updated country name Macedonia to North Macedonia
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Updated list of country names
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Country names list updated.
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Country names and Country and Territory names (HTML) files updated.
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Updated lists of countries and territories.
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FCO geographical names index - updated attachment.
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Updated with latest information.
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Updated with amended information.
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Update of both documents.
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First published.
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Updated Document.
Update history
2025-12-22 15:02
The UK Overseas Territory names attachment has been reviewed and updated: rows for ‘Akrotiri’ and ‘Dhekelia’ have been replaced with a new single row: ‘The UK Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia’.
2025-09-21 14:46
Adding Palestine to country names list.
2024-03-25 11:36
The official name for Libya changed to ‘State of Libya’. The official name for Tunisia changed to ‘Republic of Tunisia’.
2024-01-19 17:27
Updated Micronesia to Federated States of Micronesia.
2023-12-04 09:28
New link to Welsh language international place-names
2022-10-24 16:47
Country names data updated: the official name of ‘Republic of Iceland’ has been changed to ‘Iceland’.
2022-07-20 08:13
Country names list updated: official name of Turkey changed to ‘Republic of Türkiye’.
2022-04-05 15:00
Update to UK Overseas Territory names list.
2022-04-01 14:40
New list added: UK Crown Dependencies.
2022-02-17 06:54
Country names file amended: The Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal amended to Nepal