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Standard designations

DIN, DIN EN, DIN EN ISO or DIN EN ISO/IEC? The multitude of standards abbreviations briefly explained

Standards, whether national, European or international, are based on a logical and uniform system. The letter abbreviations of the standards follow certain rules and provide information about their characteristics, their scope of application or their origin. There are various ways of categorizing norms and standards, which is why they have different terms and designations. There are three main categories: DIN, ISO and EN, as well as the IEC standard in some industries. The following list explains the differences and origins of these abbreviations.
International organizations for standardization
Abbreviation Meaning
ISOISO stands for “International Organization for Standardization” and refers to international standards. The organization was founded in 1946 to establish industrial standards, simplify technical rules and harmonize them internationally.
IECThe IEC standards of the “International Electrotechnical Commission” have become established for topics relating to electrics and electronics. IEC stands for International Electrotechnical Commission.
ISO/IECThe two major standardization organizations work together on certain overlapping topics
Meaning of the standards Abbreviations
Abbreviation Meaning
DINGerman standard, with exclusively or predominantly national significance.
DIN ISO, DIN IEC, DIN ISO/IECThis is the unchanged German adoption of an international standard into the German standardization system.
DIN ENThis is a European standard (EN) that has been adopted into the German standardization system.
DIN EN ISO, DIN EN IEC, DIN EN ISO/IECThis is an international standard (ISO/IEC) that has been published as a European standard (EN) and therefore also as a German standard (DIN).
The abbreviations in the standards not only indicate which organization is responsible for developing the standard, but are also important for identifying the correct standard. The different organizations manage the numbers independently. This can lead to standards with the same number but different abbreviations relating to different issues.