Canadian postal abbreviations for provinces and territories
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Canadian provincial and territorial postal abbreviations are used by
Canada Post Canada Post Corporation (french: Société canadienne des postes), trading as Canada Post (french: Postes Canada), is a Crown corporation that functions as the primary postal operator in Canada. Originally known as Royal Mail Canada (the opera ...
in a code system consisting of two capital letters, to represent the 13 provinces and territories on addressed
mail The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letters, and parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid-19th century, national postal sys ...
. These abbreviations allow automated sorting. ISO 3166-2:CA identifiers' second elements are all the same as these; ISO adopted the existing Canada Post abbreviations. These abbreviations are not the source of letters in Canadian postal codes, which are assigned by Canada Post on a different basis than these abbreviations. While postal codes are also used for sorting, they allow extensive regional sorting. In addition, several provinces have postal codes that begin with different letters. The codes replaced the inconsistent traditional system used by
Canadians Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...
until the 1990s. Apart from the postal abbreviations, there are no officially designated traditional (or standard) abbreviations for the provinces.
Natural Resources Canada Natural Resources Canada (NRCan; french: Ressources naturelles Canada; french: RNCan, label=none)Natural Resources Canada is the applied title under the Federal Identity Program; the legal title is Department of Natural Resources (). is the dep ...
, however, maintains a list of such abbreviations which are recommended for "general purpose use" and are also used in other official contexts, such as the census conducted by Statistics Canada. Some of the French versions included a hyphen. Nunavut (created in 1999) does not have a designated abbreviation because it did not exist when these codes were phased out, though some can be found in other official works.


Names and abbreviations


Choice of letters

The sources of the postal abbreviations vary. Some are from the initials of two of the words in the name of a province or territory, while others are from the first and final letter or from the first and some other letter in the name. All of these names are based on the
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
form of the name, though they also correspond to their French equivalents in various ways (for example, NT could be read for the first and last letters of Nord-Ouest, instead of Northwest Territories). For Quebec and New Brunswick, the two provinces with large numbers of French speakers, the initials in both languages are identical. French equivalents of each abbreviation once existed: see
Traditional abbreviations A tradition is a belief or behavior (folk custom) passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examples include holidays o ...
.


Avoidance of naming overlaps with US

These abbreviations are fully compatible with the
equivalent Equivalence or Equivalent may refer to: Arts and entertainment *Album-equivalent unit, a measurement unit in the music industry * Equivalence class (music) *'' Equivalent VIII'', or ''The Bricks'', a minimalist sculpture by Carl Andre *''Equiva ...
two-letter codes used for states and territorial areas of the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
, because no abbreviations overlap. The policy of not overlapping adjacent-country abbreviations, which helps the postal processing system avoid dealing with
naming collision A naming collision is a circumstance where two or more identifiers in a given namespace or a given scope cannot be unambiguously resolved, and such unambiguous resolution is a requirement of the underlying system. Example: XML element names I ...
s, precludes use of NV for Nunavut (compare NV for
Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a state in the Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the 7th-most extensive, ...
) and TN for Terre-Neuve/Terra Nova/Newfoundland (compare TN for
Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...
). Manitoba's abbreviation, MB, is due to U.S. states already having abbreviations in all of the letters of the province's name besides "B". This policy later became a formal agreement between Canada Post and the USPS.S18, ID-tagging of letter mail items.
Universal Postal Union. Page vi. Accessed June 2, 2011.
The USPS changed the abbreviation for the U.S. state of
Nebraska Nebraska () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Kansas to the south; Colorado to the sout ...
from NB to NE in November 1969 to avoid a conflict with
New Brunswick New Brunswick (french: Nouveau-Brunswick, , locally ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. It is the only province with both English and ...
. The Canadian policy of adopting provincial abbreviations that did not overlap with the state abbreviations of adjacent countries differed from the situation in Mexico, where two-letter combinations for
Mexican states The states of Mexico are first-level administrative territorial entities of the country of Mexico, which is officially named United Mexican States. There are 32 federal entities in Mexico (31 states and the capital, Mexico City, as a separate en ...
were chosen by various competing commercial organizations (in the absence of any official Correos de México list) regardless of whether that combination was already in use in the United States or Canada, e.g., CO ( Coahuila/
Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the wes ...
), MI ( Michoacán/
Michigan Michigan () is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the List of U.S. states and ...
), MO ( Morelos/
Missouri Missouri is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee): Iowa to the north, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee to the east, Arkansas t ...
), NL ( Nuevo León/Newfoundland and Labrador), BC (
Baja California Baja California (; 'Lower California'), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Baja California ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Baja California), is a state in Mexico. It is the northernmost and westernmost of the 32 federal entities of Mex ...
/British Columbia).
ISO 3166-2 ISO 3166-2 is part of the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and defines codes for identifying the principal subdivisions (e.g., provinces or states) of all countries coded in ISO 3166-1. The ...
, an international standard, offers an alternative with globally unique
administrative division Administrative division, administrative unit,Article 3(1). country subdivision, administrative region, subnational entity, constituent state, as well as many similar terms, are generic names for geographical areas into which a particular, ind ...
identifiers, whose division elements are all between one and three letters long. This is very useful for software and web development, although it may be moot for established postal systems. Its codes for Canada, the U.S., and Mexico are listed at ISO 3166-2:CA, ISO 3166-2:US, and ISO 3166-2:MX, respectively.


Changes over time

Newfoundland and Labrador's postal abbreviation was changed from NF to NL on 21 October 2002, to reflect the provincial name change from "Newfoundland" to "Newfoundland and Labrador" on 6 December 2001. In 1991, the code for
Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...
was changed from PQ to QC. Nunavut's code became effective on 13 December 2000; before this date, but after Nunavut's creation on 1 April 1999, the abbreviation "NT" was used for Nunavut as well as the Northwest Territories. Canadian postal codes begin with "X" for both NT and NU, the only two territorial or provincial jurisdictions to share the same initial postal code letter. However, the new code NU was chosen to stem possible confusion and to reflect the new territory's creation.


Sample of a properly formatted address

Source: Canadian Addressing Guide, Canada Post, 2006; accessed July 19, 2006 " Addressing Guidelines", ''Postal Guide''
Canada Post, 2007; accessed December 20, 2007
For domestic mail:
For international mail:
Note that the street type, unit type, and city quadrant, if applicable, are abbreviated, without periods (though using periods, or even spelling out every word in its entirety, is unlikely to affect delivery in any way). Note also, for domestic mail, the lack of a comma between municipality and province or territory, the double space between the latter and the postal code, and the single space between segments of postal code, all on one line. For domestic mail, this must be the last line of the address, while for international mail, it is followed by a final line giving only the unabbreviated country name. Addresses should be done in all-upper-case without punctuation, and the unit number may follow street number, with a suitable unit identifier, e.g., "" using the above example., Canada Post, 2006; accessed July 19, 2006)"Civic Addresses", ''Postal Standards''
Canada Post, 2007; accessed December 20, 2007)
The last line of the address block area should include only the complete country name (no abbreviations) written in uppercase letters. Mail to the US often omits the country name, and vice versa, given that no postal codes nor provincial/territorial/state abbreviations duplicate one another. Foreign postal codes, if used, should be placed on the line above the destination country. The following shows the order of information for the destination address: LINE 1: NAME OF ADDRESSEE
LINE 2: STREET ADDRESS OR POST OFFICE BOX NUMBER
LINE 3: CITY OR TOWN NAME, OTHER PRINCIPAL SUBDIVISION (such as PROVINCE, STATE, or COUNTRY) AND POSTAL CODE (IF KNOWN) (Note: in some countries, the postal code may precede the city or town name)
LINE 4: COUNTRY NAME (UPPERCASE LETTERS IN ENGLISH) From th


Within and to Canada, there must be two spaces between the province abbreviation and the postal code, as shown below between "ON" and "K1A 0B1":
MS HELEN SAUNDERS
1010 CLEAR STREET
OTTAWA ON  K1A 0B1


See also

* Canadian postal code * ISO 3166-2:CA * U.S. postal abbreviations


References

{{Reflist Abbreviations Canada Post