In your case (and that of SAP employees and S users), the country information is being pulled from a DB where the country is listed by it's initials, such as 'IT' for you and 'IL' for me.
Meanwhile, public members that select their country from a drop down list get the full country name on their profile matching the selection.
Darn.
I'll open a ticket for this: they should be the same!
Thanks for pointing this out.