ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

ISO 3166

Okay, so imagine you are a kid and you have a lot of friends who live in different places around the world. You want to talk about where they live and send them letters, but it's hard to remember all the names of the countries and their abbreviation letters.

That's where ISO 3166 comes in! It's like a big list of all the countries in the world and their official code letters. It helps people know exactly which country they are talking about and makes sending mail and packages easier because the letters tell us which country it should go to.

For example, instead of just saying "my friend lives in China," we can use the code letters "CN" from ISO 3166. Then anyone who knows about ISO 3166 can easily understand that CN means China without having to spell out the whole word.

ISO 3166 is really helpful for lots of people and companies that work internationally, like airlines, shipping companies, and even websites that want to show you content specific to your country. It's like a secret language that everyone who does business all over the world can use to understand each other.