Understanding locale & culture "display" names

Between Microsoft.Net's CultureInfo and the Window's NLS GetLocaleInfoEx() APIs locales/cultures have several names intended for human display.  Note that these names are intended for human use, for machine readable names the "en-US" type name should be used.

Basically we have 3 localizations of 3 types of names.  We have the "language" name, the "region" name, and the "display" name.  Each name can be available in one of 3 forms: the "english" name, the "native" name, and the "localized" name.  Note that the localized name isn't always available, in which case one of the other forms is used.

Here's a list of the potential names you'd see (assuming your User Interface language is set to French and the French resources are available)

	Display Name	Language Name	Region Name
English Name	German (Switzerland)	German	Switzerland
Native Name	Deutsch (Schweiz)	Deutsch	Schweiz
Localized Name (if UI language is French)	Allemand (Suisse)	Allemand	Suisse

To get those values, these are the APIs you'd use. Top is the GetLocaleInfoEx() LCTYPE, bottom is the .Net class and property:

 

	Display Name	Language Name	Region Name
English Name	n/a in NLS CultureInfo.EnglishName	LOCALE_SENGLANGUAGE CultureInfo.Parent.EnglishName	LOCALE_SENGCOUNTRY RegionInfo.EnglishName
Native Name	n/a in NLS CultureInfo.NativeName	LOCALE_SNATIVELANGNAME CultureInfo.Parent.NativeName	LOCALE_SNATIVECTRYNAME RegionInfo.NativeName
Localized Name	LOCALE_SLANGUAGE CultureInfo.DisplayName	LOCALE_SLANGDISPLAYNAME CultureInfo.Parent.DisplayName	LOCALE_SCOUNTRY RegionInfo.DisplayName

Notice that .Net doesn't directly have the concept of a Language Name, but generally the Neutral culture that is the parent of a specific culture is named after the language (since it is region neutral), so we can use that.

 

Also in Windows the DisplayName (LOCALE_SLANGUAGE) is intended for display, so English and Native versions are not normally available.  The one exception is that for a custom locale the resources will not be available, so in that case the system will use the native name provided by the custom locale, or the english name if the UI language is English.

 

Sample C# code retrieving these names in .Net follows: 

 using System;
using System.Globalization;
using System.IO;

public class Sample
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter("out.txt");

        foreach (CultureInfo culture in CultureInfo.GetCultures(CultureTypes.AllCultures))
        {
            writer.WriteLine("{0} ({1})", culture.DisplayName, culture.Name);
            writer.WriteLine("Name: {0}", culture.Name);
            writer.WriteLine("Native Name: {0}", culture.NativeName);
            writer.WriteLine("English Name: {0}", culture.EnglishName);
            writer.WriteLine("Display Name: {0}", culture.DisplayName);

            if ((culture.CultureTypes & CultureTypes.SpecificCultures) != 0)
            {
                writer.WriteLine("Parent Name: {0}", culture.Parent.Name);
                writer.WriteLine("Parent Native Name: {0}", culture.Parent.NativeName);
                writer.WriteLine("Parent English Name: {0}", culture.Parent.EnglishName);
                writer.WriteLine("Parent Display Name: {0}", culture.Parent.DisplayName);
            }
            else
            {
                writer.WriteLine("Neutral Culture");
            }

            try
            {
                RegionInfo region = new RegionInfo(culture.Name);
                writer.WriteLine("Region Name: {0}", region.Name);
                writer.WriteLine("Region Native Name: {0}", region.NativeName);
                writer.WriteLine("Region English Name: {0}", region.EnglishName);
                writer.WriteLine("Region Display Name: {0}", region.DisplayName);
            }
            catch
            {
                // For geopolitical reasons we cannot create regions from some neutral culture names
                writer.WriteLine("Unable to create region for {0}", culture.Name);
            }

            writer.WriteLine();
        }

        writer.Flush();
    }
}

Comments

• Anonymous
  May 31, 2007
  PingBack from http://blogs.msdn.com/shawnste/pages/custom-cultures-vista-custom-locales.aspx

• Anonymous
  April 05, 2017
  Where you say "assuming your User Interface language is set to French" do you mean Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture or do you mean the language that the .NET framework was installed in?

  • Anonymous
    September 26, 2017
    Good question. The localized names from .Net have to have the localized resources available. (In other words, the .Net Framework installed language).