FIFA assigns a three-letter country code (more properly termed a trigramme or trigram) to each of its member and non-member countries. These are the official codes used by FIFA and its continental confederations (AFC, CAF, CONCACAF, CONMEBOL, OFC and UEFA) as name abbreviations of countries and dependent areas, in official competitions. The FIFA designations are also sometimes used outside of association football in other sports, e.g. snooker, that recognize some sub-national entities as countries for sporting purposes (such as England and Scotland rather than the overarching United Kingdom).