The ISO country codes are internationally recognized codes that designate every country and most of the dependent areas a two-letter combination or a three-letter combination; it is like an acronym, that stands for a country or a state. The country code is in use for example for the two-letter suffixes such as .us (United States), .fr (France) or .de (Germany) in top-level domains (for countries) on the Internet. The three letter code is also often used at events with international participants from various countries like sports meetings or song contests, where you can see abbreviations like CAN (for Canada), DNK (for Denmark), AUS (for Australia). Below is a list of two-letter codes (ISO alpha-2), and the three letter codes (ISO alpha-3), as well as the United Nations, used numerical code M49 for countries, dependencies, and other areas. (Dependencies marked in Italic writing)