How can I update the native_name of a language

This thread is resolved. Here is a description of the problem and solution.

Problem:
If you're trying to update the language to Cyrillic and encounter display issues like 'Ð‘ÑŠÐ»Ð³Ð°Ñ€ÑÐºÐ', this might be due to a database character encoding issue.
Solution:
We recommend going to WPML → Languages → Site Languages → Edit Languages to modify the display name of each language. Ensure your database tables and columns use a UTF-8 compatible collation, preferably 'utf8mb4_unicode_520_ci'. For more details, visit WPML Minimum Requirements. If you're unsure about making these adjustments, please contact your hosting provider to update the database collation safely.

Please note that this solution might be outdated or not applicable to your specific case. We highly recommend checking related known issues at WPML Known Issues, verifying the version of the permanent fix, and confirming that you have installed the latest versions of themes and plugins. If the issue persists, please open a new support ticket.

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Tagged: Documentation request

This topic contains 2 replies, has 1 voice.

Last updated by Andrey 1 month, 2 weeks ago.

Assisted by: Andrey.

Author	Posts
March 3, 2026 at 2:29 pm #17868929
tsvetimiraK	How can I update the language in cyrillic
March 3, 2026 at 2:35 pm #17868955
tsvetimiraK	Where do you get the native name of the language in the list icl_get_languages, so that I can update it as currently is not displayed propery on the website.
March 3, 2026 at 9:32 pm #17870206
Andrey WPML Supporter since 06/2013 Languages: English (English ) Russian (Русский ) Timezone: Europe/Kyiv (GMT+03:00)	Thank you for contacting WPML support. To change the language names, please go to: WPML → Languages → Site Languages → Edit Languages. There you can modify the display name of each language. If after saving a Cyrillic language (for example, Bulgarian) you see something like “Ð‘ÑŠÐ»Ð³Ð°Ñ€ÑÐºÐ”, this indicates a database character encoding issue. Most likely, your database tables (or some of their columns) are not using a UTF-8 compatible collation. Please make sure that your database tables and columns are set to: utf8mb4_unicode_520_ci (or another utf8mb4 collation supported by your hosting environment) You can find more details here: https://wpml.org/home/minimum-requirements/collation-and-charset/ If you’re unsure how to adjust this, I recommend contacting your hosting provider so they can safely update the database collation for you.