Postage stamp design its rule which stated that a country's name had to appear on their postage stamps, so a profile of the reigning monarch was all that was required for identification of Britain's stamps. To this day the UK remains the only country not required to name itself on its stamps. For all other UPU members, the name must appear in Latin letters. The name chosen is typically the country's own name for itself, with a modern trend towards using simpler and shorter forms, or abbreviations. For instance, the Republic of South Africa inscribes with "RSA", while Jordan originally used "The Hashemite
Postage stamps and postal history of Mexico Just as there is no consensus on what constitutes "classic stamps" in general, there is no agreement on what is the "classic period" for stamps of Mexico. In 1926, Samuel Chapman in his "The Postage Stamps of Mexico", referred to the "provisional period" as running from 1856 to 1868. In 1983, Schatzkès & Schimmer published a study of "the Cancellations of Mexico from 1856-1874", but they did not specifically call that the "classic period." Pulver in his "Introduction to the Stamps of Mexico" (1992) included a chapter entitled "Classic Era 1856-1883." Including 1883 as the end of the classic period