This web page lets you convert a 5-digit, U.S. FIPS county code
to/from a county name.
For example, FIPS code "06053" converts to "CA, Monterey" (the state's postal
abbreviation plus the county's name).
DISCLAIMER OF LIABILITY -
No person or organization associated with this website
makes any warranty, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability and
fitness for a particular purpose, or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy,
completeness, or usefulness, of any information at this website.
Background -
NIST's Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 6-4 assigned
numbers to U.S. counties, county equivalents, states, and possessions.
On September 2, 2008, the standard was withdrawn by NIST, but we find that the list is
still useful for decoding older data that uses the FIPS county codes.
A reformatted version of the original information is available at
http://www.datypic.com/sc/niem31/t-fips_6-4_USCountyCodeSimpleType.html
Exact Match -
This service requires exact matches. Entering a partial county code or
county name, or using a different case (upper or lower), will result in an error
error message.
5-Digit Codes -
This service works with the 5-digit version of the FIPS county codes.
The first two digits are the FIPS state code. The last three digits are the FIPS
county code within that state or possession.
County Names -
The format for the county names isn't standardized.
Here, they are written as "STATE, County Name", where STATE is the 2-letter
postal abbreviation.
States -
This service includes the state names in with the county names.
The last 3 digits of the state's "county" codes are 000. For example, 06000 = CA.
County-Equivalent Entities -
This service includes county-equivalent entities from
U.S. protectorates and freely associated states originally in Appendix A and B of the
FIPS list.
The state-level entities are:
60000=AS=AMERICA SAMOA
64000=FM=FEDERATED STATES OF MICRONESIA
66000=GU=GUAM
68000=MH=MARSHALL ISLANDS
69000=MP=NORTHERN MARIANA ISLANDS
70000=PW=PALAU
72000=PR=PUERTO RICO
74000=UM=U.S. MINOR OUTLYING ISLANDS
78000=VI=VIRGIN ISLANDS OF THE UNITED STATES
Percent Encoding - The parameter values in the URL (the parts after '=' signs) must be properly
percent encoded:
all characters other than A-Za-z0-9_-!.~'()* must be encoded as %HH,
where HH is the 2 digit hexadecimal value of the character, for example, a space becomes
%20. Characters above #127 must be converted to UTF-8 bytes, then each UTF-8 byte must
be percent encoded (ask a programmer for help). There are
websites that percent encode and decode for you.
