This is a meta-template that is not intended to be transcluded directly from the main article space. It can be used to construct other templates that need to extract the |alias= value from the specified country_data structure, so that customized wikilinks can be constructed. For example, {{getalias|USA}} → "संयुक्त राज्य अमेरिका".

Different parameter values can be extracted using the second unnamed parameter. Use shortname as a second parameter to retrieve the |shortname alias= value if desired. For example, {{getalias|IRL}} → "गणतन्त्र आयरल्यान्ड", but {{getalias|IRL|shortname}} → "आयरल्यान्ड". To extract the flag image name (|flag alias=), use flag as second parameter: {{getalias|CHN|flag}} → "Flag of the People's Republic of China.svg". The output defaults to the |alias= value if the desired |xxx alias= is undefined in the target template.

A third parameter can specify the variant; for example, [[File:{{getalias|United States|flag|1912}}|22px]] returns the image defined as |flag alias-1912= in {{Country data United States}}. The variant parameter can also be used to extract the link used with military and sports templates (e.g. {{army}}, {{fb}}): {{getalias|UK|link|army}} → British Army.