Updates

Denominations 2010
New data fields have been added for Denominations in 2010 so the main reporting year for Denominations has now moved from 2005 to these projections for 2010. Most denominational queries will now show affilated membership in 2000 and in 2010, along with the 10-year growth rate. Affiliated data fields for 1970 and 2005 are still available for adding to any query, and all years are shown in a denomination's detail screen.

Ethnologue 16th Edition
In the Peoples and Languages queries, all Ethnologue codes were previously translated into 16th Edition codes, and now new languages defined in the 16th Edtion Ethnologue have been added to most countries, resulting in many newly defined people groups.

Country names
This quarter sees the completion of country name and code changes to bring WCD countries into even closer alignment with the United Nations list of countries.

The population demographics underlying the WCD come directly from the UN, with the exception of Kosovo (which is extracted from Serbia's UN population) and Taiwan (which is extracted from China's UN population). WCD now lists 232 countries. Technical notes are shown below:

Nine former WCD countries are no longer extracted from their UN country:
Bougainville is now included in Papua New Guinea (appearing as a province)
British Indian Ocean currently has no permanent population
Christmas Island is now included in Australia
Cocos (Keeling) Islands is now included in Australia
Norfolk Island is now included in Australia
Northern Cyprus is now included in Cyprus (appearing as a province)
Somaliland is now included in Somalia (appearing as provinces)
Spanish North Africa is now included in Spain (appearing as cities)
Svalbard & Jan Mayen is now included in Norway (appearing as a province)

The links above provide a detailed religious picture for these countries (plus Antarctica) for the year 2000 in the form of extracts from the World Christian Encyclopedia (2001).

Two special administrative areas are separated out from China by the UN, now appearing as countries:
'Hong Kong' (code hong)
'Macau' (code maca)

Six WCD countries have been renamed and their country codes changed for the new alphabetical order:
What was 'Britain' (code brit) BECOMES 'United Kingdom' (code unik)
What was 'Ivory Coast' (code ivor) BECOMES 'Cote d'Ivoire' (code cote)
What was 'Sahara' (code saha) BECOMES 'Western Sahara' (code west)
What was 'USA' (code usa) BECOMES 'United States' (code unis)
What was 'Virgin Is of the US' (code virg) BECOMES 'United States Virgin Is' (code univ)
'Uruguay' changes its code from 'uuay' TO 'urug'

Six countries have had the spelling of their short country name changed or expanded:
What was 'Antigua' BECOMES 'Antigua & Barbuda'
What was 'DR Congo' BECOMES 'Congo DR'
What was 'Timor' BECOMES 'Timor-Leste'
What was 'British Virgin Is' BECOMES 'British Virgin Islands'
What was 'Central African Rep' BECOMES 'Central African Republic'
What was 'Wallis & Futuna Is' BECOMES 'Wallis & Futuna Islands'

The core religious data of the World Christian Database has been updated from mid-2005 to mid-2010.

This means that estimates for the number of religionists in every country of the world are now reconciled with the United Nations population projections for mid-2010. The update includes statistics on all world religions as well as the peoples (first round of projections), cities, provinces and country tables.

Unless labelled otherwise, all data in WCD now refer to 2010 and this update includes two new data points (1950 and 2010) which have been added to the religious change over time tables for all countries.

Note that Christian denominations and communions remain labelled as AD 2005 until the next quarterly update in April when the first estimates for 2010 denominations will be added, along with a second round of reconcilliation of 2010 data in the Peoples table.

Included in this update are new projections of religious adherents for 2025 and 2050.