Google Earth: City names in your preferred language

We love to give you options on how to view information in Google Earth, but we also want to make sure we’re organizing that information in a way that is useful and easy to read. We realize that a city may be referenced in different ways, in different languages. Presenting all of these names on the map in a single view can sometimes make the map harder to read, not to mention, may even detract users from other, useful information. In the interest of providing the smoothest browsing experience possible, we’ve updated Google Earth so that each city has just one label in a user’s default language.
 


 

These settings are flexible. If you would like to change the way in which cities are displayed, just follow these instructions to change your default language. If you prefer to see cities in two languages, turn on the ‘Local Place Names’ layer under the ‘More’ folder. This way, if you fly to the capital of Japan, for example, you’ll see both “Tokyo” and “東京“.

Click on “Local Place Names” to turn on a second, local name for each city.

And remember, if you think that there’s a better name for a city in your language, we’d love to hear your feedback via the “Report a Problem” link in the help center.