Country names

Hoddie

I've tweaking my shipping methods to take account of the current Covid-19 restrictions and it became apparent there are a few problems with BO's list of shipping destinations.

Can I suggest the following:

The following names are incredibly political and ideally should be renamed:

Falkland Islands (Malvinas) - Falkland Islands
Palestinian Territory, Occupied - Palestinian Territories

The following include redundant information:

Iran, Islamic Republic of - Iran
Lao People's Democratic Republic - Laos
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya - Libya
Moldova, Republic of - Moldova
Tanzania, United Republic of - Tanzania

The following are incorrect and should be renamed:

Macedonia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of - North Macedonia
Saint Helena - Saint Helena (including Ascension and Tristan de Cunha)
Netherlands Antilles - Caribbean Netherlands

The following are correct but not the common English name:

Korea, Democratic People's Republic of - Korea (North)
Korea, Republic of - Korea (South)

Removal of commas as these complicate the lists on the delivery pages:

Virgin Islands, British - Virgin Islands (British)
Virgin Islands, U.s. - Virgin Islands (US)

Following seem to be missing:

Isle of Man
Kosovo
South Sudan

Following should be removed:

Antarctica (there are several ways to address post here depending on the station, which would necessitate splitting this amongst a dozen or more entries, easier to remove given how unlikely it would be to receive an order from any of them)
Bouvet Island (uninhabited)
British Indian Ocean Territory (only military personnel present, and parcels would be shipped via UK or US military addresses)
French Southern Territories (only scientists and military personnel, and parcels would be shipped via French military)
Heard Island and McDonald Islands (uninhabited)

Addition of the following territories commonly distinguished by postal services:

Spain (Canary Islands)
Spain (Ceuta and Melilla)
Netherlands (Curaçao)
Portugal (Azores)
Portugal (Madeira)
France (Saint Barthélemy)
France (Saint-Martin)
UK (outer islands)
Finland (Åland Islands)
Netherlands (Sint Maarten)
New Zealand (Tokelau)

If the above are added, it may be beneficial to rename the following:

Norfolk Island - Australia (Norfolk Island)
American Samoa - USA (Samoa)
Caribbean Netherlands - Netherlands (Caribbean)
Saint Pierre and Miquelon - France (Saint Pierre and Miquelon)
Svalbard and Jan Mayen - Norway (Svalbard and Jan Mayen)
Anguilla - UK (Anguilla)
Aruba - Netherlands (Aruba)
Christmas Island - Australia (Christmas Island)
Cocos (Keeling) Islands - Australia (Cocos - Keeling - Islands)
Falkland Islands - UK (Falkland Islands)
French Polynesia - France (Polynesia)
French Guiana - France (Guiana)
Gibraltar - UK (Gibraltar)
Greenland - Denmark (Greenland)
Faroe Islands - Denmark (Faroe Islands)
Guadeloupe - France (Guadeloupe)
Guernsey - UK (Guernsey)
Jersey - UK (Jersey)
Martinique - France (Martinique)
Mayotte - France (Mayotte)
Montserrat - UK (Montserrat)
New Caledonia - France (New Caledonia)
Pitcairn - UK (Pitcairn Islands)
Puerto Rico - USA (Puerto Rico)
Guam - USA (Guam)
New Helena - UK (New Helena)
South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands - UK (South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands)
Turks and Caicos Islands - UK (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Wallis and Futuna - France (Wallis and Futuna Islands)
Hong Kong - China (Hong Kong)
Macau - China (Macau)
Bermuda - UK (Bermuda)
Cayman Islands - UK (Cayman Islands)
Isle of Man - UK (Isle of Man)
Northern Mariana Islands - USA (Northern Mariana Islands)

Ignoring semantics about whether these are self-governing (in the case of most of them) or simply an overseas territory of their country (in the case of the Caribbean Netherlands) - as such considerations aren't necessary from a shipping point of view, it would be beneficial to have these alongside their parent countries alphabetically to make it easier to set up shipping methods. National carriers, such as Royal Mail, may consider them to be part of the domestic service, but other national carriers may not, and international carriers almost certainly won't.

Lawrence

Thank you for that, that's incredibly thorough. We use a standard ISO country list obtained many years ago. Ideally we'd rather not step into a minefield by making potentially controversial changes by renaming the countries. If you aware of a source for some of this, that would be ideal. I briefly checked 6 different ISO country lists online and all had "Falkland Islands" with "Malvinas" in there.

I should clarify this country is not purely used for shipping

Hoddie

The problem with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is that they have to pander to countries in order to get their agreement to any standards.

Hence the inclusion of Malvinas at the request of Argentina. There's nobody living on the Falklands who would use that term. And including 'Occupied' on mail destined for the Palestinian Territories would likely get it seized if it transited through Israel. I don't suppose BO stores will get many orders for either, but it just looks political to list them the way they are shown.

Again, hence the inclusion of 'Islamic Republic' against Iran's name.

It has to also be remembered that a list of countries does not necessarily mean it is a list of shipping destinations. Consider FIFA nations - similar to but different from the ISO list.

Ceute is, for all intents and purposes, part of Spain. It is treated the same as any other part of Spain. But because it's an enclave on the northern coast of Africa, shipping companies treat it as a separate destination. The same is true for the French and Dutch overseas territories, officially treated the same as what we know to be France and Netherlands, but shipping companies think differently.

The omissions such as South Sudan and Kosovo really need to be added. The Isle of Man too because even the Royal Mail treat it as overseas for some services. The Belgian national carrier won't send parcels there by any expedited method.

There are many, many oddities in the world of shipping. For instance, there's a town in the Netherlands (Baarle-Nassau) where some houses are considered Belgian territory, and mail can be sent address to the Netherlands or Belgium. There are territories claimed by more than one country where mail may not be delivered if it doesn't give what the de facto authorities think is correct (Crimea is one, Abkhazia another, etc.). You can't legislate for all these, not least because correcting it for some members will be breaking it for others.

As for an official source - the best you can do is refer to a list of shipping destinations from one of the big international carriers (DHL maybe), and perhaps add in others as they become necessary (as new countries emerge, etc.).

While I'm here, I forgot one:

Swaziland should now be Eswatini (English variant of the name officially changed in 2018).

Regards the name changes at the top of my previous post, I believe the Netherlands Antilles became Caribbean Netherlands in 2010 when some of the islands became constituent parts of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, equal to the European mainland, and some remained as associated territories. FYROM became North Macedonia a couple of years ago following agreement with Greece, and Saint Helena just wasn't the complete name.

In most cases we won't see orders from these places so I'm not overly bothered either way. But as I was trawling through bPost's list of destinations (https://www.bpost.be/sites/default/files/product/ListePays_FR-bpackWorldExpress.pdf in French), thought I'd list the omissions and changes needed.

Lawrence

Thank you, I see our list was clearly out of date, as it was from around 2011, and clearly countries change regularly. We've made some changes based on the UN list, updating country names that changed, removing countries etc. And adding Isle of Man/South Sudan.

Although I understand your comments regarding the variation of lists, we certainly don't want to form our own country list, so we choose to use the ISO list.

Stellar

"Addition of the following territories commonly distinguished by postal services:

Spain (Canary Islands)
Spain (Ceuta and Melilla)"

Apart from different shipping cost to these destinations, there does not apply the EU-VAT to goods shipped there. So (as I requested long ago) these should be differentiated in some manner from shipping and from VAT.

Please, have a thought.

Sergio
Stellar Bricks

Hoddie

Thank-you for adding the Isle of Man and the others.

But now we have "Czech Republic (Czechia)" … it seems like a halfway house kind of system where you're trying to use a politically-defined list of countries, with questionable entries like Jersey, to help sellers define their shipping methods. It's not really as simple as marrying a list of countries to a list of shipping destinations, because unfortunately they're not the same thing.

I'm not going to bang on about it. Out of interest, though, which ISO list are you using?

Hoddie

@Stellar - there are similar VAT-free zones in Italy, Greece and Cyprus to my knowledge. It's a separate issue to delivery destinations but if the system that applies VAT is using the same list of countries, it does indeed need attention because it's not proper to charge VAT where it doesn't apply (could result in a fine if an invoice or receipt is issued showing VAT).

Lawrence

I agree, it's a complex problem, requiring a complex solution, not solvable with country lists. I expect the Scottish Highlands won't appreciate if I annex them from the rest of Scotland because DHL doesn't provide a universal service. I was using this to cross reference https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#search

Hoddie

Can we at least remove Lancashire from England?