How to get an "English name" for a character?

Question

I was just using this most helpful link: How do I check if a given string is a legal / valid file name under Windows?

And inside some validate code I have something that looks like (ignore the fact that I'm not using a StringBuilder class and ignore the bug in forming the message (don't need to tell them about 'Colon' more than once if it shows up in the string more than once)):

string InvalidFileNameChars = new string(Path.GetInvalidFileNameChars());
Regex ContainsABadChar = new Regex("[" + Regex.Escape(InvalidFileNameChars) + "]");

MatchCollection BadChars = ContainsABadChar.Matches(txtFileName.Text);
if (BadChars.Count > 0)
{
    string Msg = "The following invalid characters were detected:\r\n\r\n";
    foreach (Match Bad in BadChars)
    {
        Msg += Bad.Value + "\r\n";
    }
    MessageBox.Show(Msg, "Error", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error);
    return;
}

That MessageBox will look something like (using the example that a colon was found):

-- begin --

The following invalid characters are detected:

:

-- end --

I'd like it to say something like:

-- begin --

The following invalid characters are detected:

Colon -> :

-- end --

I like having the english name. Not a killer, but was curious if there's some function out there like (which doesn't exist for the Char class, but may exist in some other class I'm not thinking of):

Char.GetEnglishName(':');

Answer 1

I compiled a dictionary of character names that I gathered from various sources for a personal tool I made to search through unicode characters: http://jumpingfishes.com/unicodechars.htm

The dictionary is expressed as a JavaScript array and contains 20,761 definitions. Feel free to borrow my JavaScript to create a C# dictionary:
http://jumpingfishes.com/unicodeDescriptions.js

Edit: Better yet, here's the text file I used to generate my JavaScript. This might be a little easier source to parse for generating a C# dictionary. It contains the character code in hex followed by a tab followed by the character description.
http://jumpingfishes.com/unicodeDictionary.txt

Answer 2

You can just use the basic latin and controls unicode block if you don't need to account for every character, ever.

You can define the table as a simple string array to make lookups fast:

string[] lookup = new string[128];
lookup[0x00]="Null character";
lookup[0x01]="Start of Heading";
lookup[0x02]="Start of Text";
lookup[0x03]="End-of-text character";
lookup[0x04]="End-of-transmission character";
lookup[0x05]="Enquiry character";
lookup[0x06]="Acknowledge character";
lookup[0x07]="Bell character";
lookup[0x08]="Backspace";
lookup[0x09]="Horizontal tab";
lookup[0x0A]="Line feed";
lookup[0x0B]="Vertical tab";
lookup[0x0C]="Form feed";
lookup[0x0D]="Carriage return";
lookup[0x0E]="Shift Out";
lookup[0x0F]="Shift In";
lookup[0x10]="Data Link Escape";
lookup[0x11]="Device Control 1";
lookup[0x12]="Device Control 2";
lookup[0x13]="Device Control 3";
lookup[0x14]="Device Control 4";
lookup[0x15]="Negative-acknowledge character";
lookup[0x16]="Synchronous Idle";
lookup[0x17]="End of Transmission Block";
lookup[0x18]="Cancel character";
lookup[0x19]="End of Medium";
lookup[0x1A]="Substitute character";
lookup[0x1B]="Escape character";
lookup[0x1C]="File Separator";
lookup[0x1D]="Group Separator";
lookup[0x1E]="Record Separator";
lookup[0x1F]="Unit Separator";
lookup[0x20]="Space";
lookup[0x21]="Exclamation mark";
lookup[0x22]="Quotation mark";
lookup[0x23]="Number sign";
lookup[0x24]="Dollar sign";
lookup[0x25]="Percent sign";
lookup[0x26]="Ampersand";
lookup[0x27]="Apostrophe";
lookup[0x28]="Left parenthesis";
lookup[0x29]="Right parenthesis";
lookup[0x2A]="Asterisk";
lookup[0x2B]="Plus sign";
lookup[0x2C]="Comma";
lookup[0x2D]="Hyphen-minus";
lookup[0x2E]="Full stop";
lookup[0x2F]="Slash";
lookup[0x30]="Digit Zero";
lookup[0x31]="Digit One";
lookup[0x32]="Digit Two";
lookup[0x33]="Digit Three";
lookup[0x34]="Digit Four";
lookup[0x35]="Digit Five";
lookup[0x36]="Digit Six";
lookup[0x37]="Digit Seven";
lookup[0x38]="Digit Eight";
lookup[0x39]="Digit Nine";
lookup[0x3A]="Colon";
lookup[0x3B]="Semicolon";
lookup[0x3C]="Less-than sign";
lookup[0x3D]="Equal sign";
lookup[0x3E]="Greater-than sign";
lookup[0x3F]="Question mark";
lookup[0x40]="At sign";
lookup[0x41]="Latin Capital letter A";
lookup[0x42]="Latin Capital letter B";
lookup[0x43]="Latin Capital letter C";
lookup[0x44]="Latin Capital letter D";
lookup[0x45]="Latin Capital letter E";
lookup[0x46]="Latin Capital letter F";
lookup[0x47]="Latin Capital letter G";
lookup[0x48]="Latin Capital letter H";
lookup[0x49]="Latin Capital letter I";
lookup[0x4A]="Latin Capital letter J";
lookup[0x4B]="Latin Capital letter K";
lookup[0x4C]="Latin Capital letter L";
lookup[0x4D]="Latin Capital letter M";
lookup[0x4E]="Latin Capital letter N";
lookup[0x4F]="Latin Capital letter O";
lookup[0x50]="Latin Capital letter P";
lookup[0x51]="Latin Capital letter Q";
lookup[0x52]="Latin Capital letter R";
lookup[0x53]="Latin Capital letter S";
lookup[0x54]="Latin Capital letter T";
lookup[0x55]="Latin Capital letter U";
lookup[0x56]="Latin Capital letter V";
lookup[0x57]="Latin Capital letter W";
lookup[0x58]="Latin Capital letter X";
lookup[0x59]="Latin Capital letter Y";
lookup[0x5A]="Latin Capital letter Z";
lookup[0x5B]="Left Square Bracket";
lookup[0x5C]="Backslash";
lookup[0x5D]="Right Square Bracket";
lookup[0x5E]="Circumflex accent";
lookup[0x5F]="Low line";
lookup[0x60]="Grave accent";
lookup[0x61]="Latin Small Letter A";
lookup[0x62]="Latin Small Letter B";
lookup[0x63]="Latin Small Letter C";
lookup[0x64]="Latin Small Letter D";
lookup[0x65]="Latin Small Letter E";
lookup[0x66]="Latin Small Letter F";
lookup[0x67]="Latin Small Letter G";
lookup[0x68]="Latin Small Letter H";
lookup[0x69]="Latin Small Letter I";
lookup[0x6A]="Latin Small Letter J";
lookup[0x6B]="Latin Small Letter K";
lookup[0x6C]="Latin Small Letter L";
lookup[0x6D]="Latin Small Letter M";
lookup[0x6E]="Latin Small Letter N";
lookup[0x6F]="Latin Small Letter O";
lookup[0x70]="Latin Small Letter P";
lookup[0x71]="Latin Small Letter Q";
lookup[0x72]="Latin Small Letter R";
lookup[0x73]="Latin Small Letter S";
lookup[0x74]="Latin Small Letter T";
lookup[0x75]="Latin Small Letter U";
lookup[0x76]="Latin Small Letter V";
lookup[0x77]="Latin Small Letter W";
lookup[0x78]="Latin Small Letter X";
lookup[0x79]="Latin Small Letter Y";
lookup[0x7A]="Latin Small Letter Z";
lookup[0x7B]="Left Curly Bracket";
lookup[0x7C]="Vertical bar";
lookup[0x7D]="Right Curly Bracket";
lookup[0x7E]="Tilde";
lookup[0x7F]="Delete";

Then, all you need to do is:

var englishName = lookup[(int)'~'];

Or:

 public static string ToEnglishName(this char c)
 {
    int i = (int)c;
    if( i < lookup.Length )
       return lookup[i];
    return "Unknown";
 }

 var name = ':'.ToEnglishName(); // Colon