Why isn't CultureInfo.NativeName always capitalized?

Question

Just out of curiousity...

In our application I list all the available translations in the following format "NativeName - EnglishName". For some languages the NativeName isn't capitalized eg.

"Deutsch - German"
"español - Spanish"
"français - French"
"italiano - Italian"
"Nederlands - Dutch"
"polski - Polish"

It's no big deal to capitalize the first letter, but what is the reason behind this?

Answer 1

From my vague memory of French, it is most likely because the name of the language in the language (ie. the name for French, in French) isn't capitalised.

That is, some languages capitalise proper nouns, some don't. Since the name of the language is a proper noun, it will be capitalised based on the rules appropriate to the language it is the name of.

There is a tool called Culture Explorer that allows you to easily browse all available cultures and there settings. I've found it very useful on a number of occasions.