ISO 4217 "ruble". In addition to codes for most active national currencies ISO 4217 provides codes for "supranational" currencies, procedural purposes, and several things which are "similar to" currencies: The use of an initial letter "X" for these purposes is facilitated by the ISO 3166 rule that no official country code beginning with X will ever be assigned. Because of this rule ISO 4217 can use X codes without risk of clashing with a future country code. ISO 3166 country codes beginning with "X" are used for private custom use (reserved), never for official codes. For instance, the ISO 3166-based NATO country
International Organization for Standardization ISO gives this explanation of the name: "Because 'International Organization for Standardization' would have different acronyms in different languages (IOS in English, OIN in French), our founders decided to give it the short form "ISO". "ISO" is derived from the Greek "", meaning equal. Whatever the country, whatever the language, the short form of our name is always "ISO"." Both the name "ISO" and the ISO logo are registered trademarks, and their use is restricted. The organization today known as ISO began in 1926 as the International Federation of the National Standardizing Associations (ISA). It was suspended in 1942 during