ISO 639 is the international standard that assigns short codes to human languages so software, web pages and library systems can label content unambiguously. This reference lets developers, translators and content editors search every major language by English name, native name, two-letter ISO 639-1 code or three-letter ISO 639-2 code, and copy the right one.
How it works
The full language list ships with the page. As you type, every row is matched against four fields at once — English name, native name (endonym), the 639-1 code and the 639-2/T code — and the table filters to the rows that contain your text. There is no lookup request and no API call; filtering is a plain client-side string match.
Each row gives you both code forms so you can pick the one your platform expects:
| Field | Example (German) | Where it is used |
|---|---|---|
| English name | German | Human-readable UI labels |
| Native name | Deutsch | Language pickers shown to native speakers |
| ISO 639-1 (2-letter) | de | HTML lang, hreflang, most web APIs |
| ISO 639-2/T (3-letter) | deu | Libraries, MARC records, terminology systems |
Example
To label a French page for search engines and screen readers, search “French”. The row returns fr (639-1) and fra (639-2/T), so you would write <html lang="fr">. If you instead needed a bibliographic catalogue entry, you would use the three-letter fra.
All searches run entirely in your browser — nothing you type is uploaded or stored.