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United States Abbreviations

With 50 states and one federal district of Columbia, it is difficult for most people around the world to recognize a state by its official abbreviation. Most Americans can intuitively guess abbreviations of the states which they encounter in press, official documents, books, letters or elsewhere. However, many of them will still struggle to name all United States abbreviations correctly without consulting any guides or reference lists. What to say then about non-Americans who have never learnt names of all US states at school and know them mostly from popular culture? Naturally, millions of people around the world will know that NY stands for the state of New York, DC stands for District of Columbia or FL – for the state of Florida. However, naming abbreviations of less known states, like Ohio, Maine or Wyoming, will be quite a problem for most of the people. It is also worth remembering that abbreviations of some of the states of USA completely coincide with official abbreviations of other countries. For instance, an abbreviation DE stands both for the state of Delaware and the country of Germany. So in order to avoid confusion, we highly recommend you to use our full list of United States abbreviations.