Eli5: Why do some nations use an Internet address suffix derived from their English name and others use the native nation name?

Question

IE, why does Japan use .jp and not .ni? While Germany uses .de and not .ge?

In: Technology

Answer 1

The country codes were directly pulled from the ISO 3166 list of country codes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_3166_country_codes

This list was first published in 1974, predating most ideas of computers being commonplace and needing a common language and alphabet for most functions. Since it was a Latin Alphabet representation, countries that didn’t use the Latin Alphabet weren’t necessarily treated the same as those that did. Since Germany used the Latin alphabet, they would be more insistent on having their own country name represented. Since Japan didn’t use the Latin alphabet, they may have accepted that the country code should represent how countries that *do* use the Latin alphabet see them.