Get Culture Display Name in its language

Question

I am getting the current culture as follows:

var culture = Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.DisplayName;

The problem is that I always get the name in English:

EN becomes English
PT becomes Portuguese instead of Português
FR becomes French instead of ...

How can I get the DisplayName of a Culture in that specific language?

Thank You, Miguel

Display will display the name in the language of the current .net framework location. Use Name or NativeName. — provençal le breton, Oct 21 '13 at 13:38

score 21 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 21 '13 at 13:37

21

You need to display the NativeName instead of the DisplayName.

answered Oct 21 '13 at 13:37

Roy Dictus

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It does not work ... I get English anyway ... Maybe because my OS is in English? – Miguel Moura Oct 21 '13 at 17:12

score 10 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 27 '17 at 07:58

If one just tries to get the localized language of a culture (without the country) one can use this snippet:

CultureInfo culture = Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture;

string nativeName = culture.IsNeutralCulture
    ? culture.NativeName
    : culture.Parent.NativeName;

If one will use a specific localized language name, one can use this:

string language = "es-ES";
CultureInfo culture = new CultureInfo(language);

string nativeName = culture.IsNeutralCulture
    ? culture.NativeName
    : culture.Parent.NativeName;

If one wants to have a title case name (e.g. Français instead of français), use this line:

string result = CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.TextInfo.ToTitleCase(nativeName);

As a method:

private static string GetTitleCaseNativeLanguage(string language)
{
    CultureInfo culture = new CultureInfo(language);

    string nativeName = culture.IsNeutralCulture
        ? culture.NativeName
        : culture.Parent.NativeName;

    return CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.TextInfo.ToTitleCase(nativeName);
}

Or as an extension method:

public static string GetNativeLanguageName(this CultureInfo culture, bool useTitleCase = true)
{
    string nativeName = culture.IsNeutralCulture
        ? culture.NativeName
        : culture.Parent.NativeName;

    return useTitleCase
        ? CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.TextInfo.ToTitleCase(nativeName)
        : nativeName;
}

tomsullivan1989 · Answer 3 · 2013-10-21T13:48:58.763

DisplayName will be shown in the language of the location of the current .NET framework.

You can use NativeName (or maybe even just Name I've not tried this) instead of DisplayName, that should do the trick.

Edit

After testing this with the following code:

// set the current culture to German    
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = new CultureInfo("de-DE");
var native = Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.NativeName;
var display = Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.DisplayName;
var name = Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.Name;

The results were:

native = "Deutsch (Deutschland)"

display = "German (Germany)"

name = "de-DE"

Get Culture Display Name in its language

3 Answers3