[image] An initial selection of locale should auto-populate the common names language. I would imagine it would then first prioritize the common name language (aka “lexicon”) and second prioritize the place. Common name place should only be necessary to assign when there are conflicts between area…

OK, this has been released: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/you-can-now-choose-up-to-three-common-name-lexicons-to-view-at-once/46446

Thanks. Yes, I thought that was the case, which is why I haven’t voted for it. If I default iNat to our New Zealand network, I’d like to automatically see all of the default New Zealand common names, regardless of which are Māori and which are English (and there’s a mix), rather than having to be fo…

That would need manual curation by you perhaps? To a master list for the country of New Zealand (as a third iNat language for NZ?) And then the two options for Māori, or English.

Thanks Diana. Yes, we’ve already been doing that for a while now as part of the NZ iNat Network. We’ve been assigning preferred species names to the New Zealand country when they’re different from the global names, and rearranging the order so the name in most common NZ usage is at the top. I’ve jus…

I don’t want to think about how South Africa would / will deal with our many common languages. Already conflict between the 2 that I was taught at school. iNat always offers an animal before a plant on the list (even if it’s a FLOWER) So bees offers the Afrikaans for cattle, and then the English I…

It seems odd that setting to affiliate with a network drives language choice. That doesn’t work in multilingual nations like Canada etc at all. The name display tool needs to be a grid or venn diagram if you wish of language you are running the site in and chosen place for names. I often run the s…

Thanks for that that. Yes, I can see how this is more complicated in places like Canada. I can see a workable solution for New Zealand being something like, if I affiliate with the iNaturalist NZ network, iNat automatically defaults me to Māori common names and when there’s not one of those, it use…

I would disagree, setting a network affiliation should not influence names displayed in any way. What happens to the user who affiliates to share data with partners etc who happens to speak a different language, force them to see names they don’t prefer ? It should be driven by how you configure th…

Hmm. I suppose the issue here is what’s the best default that will suit most users, and how best to allow the user to change the default if that is not what they want. For New Zealand users in New Zealand, it still makes sense to me that the default name should be the most used New Zealand common n…

Machine translated or not, the Chinese version of the site/app is harder for me (a native Chinese speaker) to understand than the English version. So I prefer to use the English version. However, I still want to see the common names in Chinese instead of English.

btw you can contribute to translation if you think it’s not done optimally now.

Select language for common names

Feature Requests

Topic		Replies	Views
You can now choose up to three common name lexicons to view at once News and Updates web , android-app , ios-classic-app	41	3163	May 31, 2024
Is there a way for me to select English only when my region is set for multiple languages? General question	21	2241	June 30, 2020
Common names in french instead of english Bug Reports	25	1411	July 20, 2023
Choose common names language and place in the app Feature Requests android-app , implemented , mobile-app	11	3712	August 13, 2025
Display common names in multiple languages on taxon labels Feature Requests web , android-app , ios-classic-app , implemented	20	1807	January 18, 2024

Select language for common names

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