# Common name preferences in Seek

**URL:** <https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/common-name-preferences-in-seek/3804>\
**Category:** General\
**Tags:** seek\
**Created:** [June 2, 2019, 12:30pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/common-name-preferences-in-seek/3804 "2019-06-02T12:30:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![tonyrebelo](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/tonyrebelo/32/317_2.png) [@tonyrebelo](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/tonyrebelo)\
**Post date:** [June 2, 2019, 12:30pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/common-name-preferences-in-seek/3804/1 "2019-06-02T12:30:39Z")

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In South Africa it shows weird American horticultural names for our plants that no one here has heard of. (presumably some cultivars available in the northern hemisphere?).  
Since it only shows common names, it is very confusing to use - familiar plants with strange names…  
Our local names - where these differ from American names - are stored under place “southern Africa” - it would be far more useful if these names were used instead (or if there was an option to use local names). [note that “southern Africa” is not in the Africa \> South Africa place hierarchy, so perhaps that might be an issue).

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**Author:** ![carnifex](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/carnifex/32/62_2.png) [@carnifex](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/carnifex)\
**Post date:** [June 13, 2019, 6:32pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/common-name-preferences-in-seek/3804/2 "2019-06-13T18:32:08Z")

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It would be great to have more options on selecting regional names or a specific language for the taxa, independent of the system language of the cell phone. Because of Seek, I changed my phone’s language to English, because the German translation within the app was unbearable to me, but still sometimes I would like to have the names displayed in German. I am also missing an option to switch to the **scientific** names being displayed as well. Thinking about it, using Seek not only to get to know species but also their names in different languages would be neat, but this is maybe asked too much :)

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**Author:** ![bouteloua](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/bouteloua/32/1180_2.png) [@bouteloua](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/bouteloua)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2019, 1:14pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/common-name-preferences-in-seek/3804/3 "2019-07-05T13:14:08Z")

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A post was split to a new topic: [Improving translation in Seek?](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/improving-translation-in-seek/4758)

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/uploads/inaturalist/original/2X/7/7831452cf7f0d653ff1ffd34176334b7ef1b6a17.png) [@system](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/system)\
**Post date:** [September 3, 2019, 1:15pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/common-name-preferences-in-seek/3804/4 "2019-09-03T13:15:00Z")

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