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I'm coding a health system which should offer a menu containing the list of mexican states (and DF) in a patients' creation section.

I know there is RENAPO's standard, but it differs from other standards, as you can see in this Wikipedia's article, and I don't know which standard is the best to use.

Which 2-digits abbreviation standard is more used to identify a mexican state as part of an address or a person birthplace?

An ASCII example (Aguascalientes, Baja California, Baja California Sur, Campeche and Chiapas):

+------------+
| Estado [V] |
+------------+
| AS         |
| BC         |
| BS         |
| CC         |
| CS         |
| ...        |
+------------+

(I've been searching the best SE site to post this question. According this question, it is here, so let me know if you have a better suggestion).

EDIT

I found in this Wikipedia page the following comment:

*Mexico's post agency, Correos de México, does not offer an official list. Various competing commercially devised lists exist. The list here reflects choices among them according to these sources.

Even without an official list, I'd like to know what developers would use in the combobox for the users and what abbreviation should be stored in the database. Actually I'm not sure it a 2-digit abbreviation is really used.

EDIT2

I find this list in INEGI website. Is this abbreviation standard the most used by mexican users?

+---------------------------------+---------------+
|              State              | Abbr. (INEGI) |
+---------------------------------+---------------+
| Aguascalientes                  | Ags.          |
| Baja California                 | BC            |
| Baja California Sur             | BCS           |
| Campeche                        | Camp.         |
| Coahuila de Zaragoza            | Coah.         |
| Colima                          | Col.          |
| Chiapas                         | Chis.         |
| Chihuahua                       | Chih.         |
| Ciudad de México                | DF            |
| Durango                         | Dgo.          |
| Guanajuato                      | Gto.          |
| Guerrero                        | Gro.          |
| Hidalgo                         | Hgo.          |
| Jalisco                         | Jal.          |
| México                          | Mex.          |
| Michoacán de Ocampo             | Mich.         |
| Morelos                         | Mor.          |
| Nayarit                         | Nay.          |
| Nuevo León                      | NL            |
| Oaxaca                          | Oax.          |
| Puebla                          | Pue.          |
| Querétaro                       | Qro.          |
| Quintana Roo                    | Q. Roo        |
| San Luis Potosí                 | SLP           |
| Sinaloa                         | Sin.          |
| Sonora                          | Son.          |
| Tabasco                         | Tab.          |
| Tamaulipas                      | Tamps.        |
| Tlaxcala                        | Tlax.         |
| Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave | Ver.          |
| Yucatán                         | Yuc.          |
| Zacatecas                       | Zac.          |
+---------------------------------+---------------+
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  • 2
    The first question to arise here is, do it needs to be 2 digits? From the wikipedia page I think the most common used are the Abbreviations, that are up to 6 digits. I'm from Nuevo León, so a single NL will suffice, but I wouldn't know that AS is Aguascalientes or BS is Baja California Sur. I think you can use the 2 digits abbreviations internally but use something longer on the user side.
    – fernando.reyes
    Dec 7, 2016 at 22:55
  • 1
    @fernando.reyes. And NL breaks Canada's convention for NL: Newfoundland/Labrador.
    – MMacD
    Dec 8, 2016 at 12:14
  • 1
    When there is not even a de-facto standard, the only safe thing to do is to create Americas-unique substrings, which should not be 2 chars since, as with Canada's adoption of NL for the Newfies-Labs, an unofficial 2-char code has no protection against being broken by some official decision.
    – MMacD
    Dec 8, 2016 at 12:19
  • 1
    Being INEGI the authority on geographical and population information, that's the source that you need to base you info on. You'll never go wrong using the abbreviations proposed by INEGI for this.
    – fernando.reyes
    Dec 8, 2016 at 22:47
  • 1
    @VictorFS Did your team settle on one of the options? If so, don't forget that you can answer your own question!
    – called2voyage
    Dec 15, 2016 at 20:14

1 Answer 1

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Unlike Brazil (my country), Mexico does not have a broadly used 2-digits abbreviation system for its federal entities. The Mexican postal service recommends INEGI standard.

So we internally opted for RENAPO's standard (2 digits), but at the presentation layers, menus, etc, when it is necessary, we will present the INEGI standard (more than 2 digits, including points, upper case and lower case), which seems broadly known by Mexican users.

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