[hoosierglass]

From looking at the countries.php in admin, there seem to be some that are hard coded there and then some that refer to zones. There is also enough to make me believe that it is a label function in the languages.

You know way more about this than I ever will, but thought a view from a rookie prospective might help you look at it in a different way.

[edit]
after looking at labels you have country labels such as country_AF which is Africa and label_AF which is Africa, so it would most likely be that the country abvs. are set in the countries.php file as well as the mysql database table.

Mike