Chapman codes | FreeREG

Chapman codes

Chapman codes are widely used abbreviations for county names. We use these three-letter codes when transcribing records as they save typing and need less space in the database than the full names.

Do not worry about researchers: they choose from a list of the county names written in full.

Chapman codes are a set of three-letter codes used in genealogy to identify the administrative divisions in the British Isles: the United Kingdom (of Great Britain and Northern Ireland), Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands.

The codes were devised by the historian Dr Colin R Chapman, in the late 1970s. Today, they are a widely used shorthand in genealogy.

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