Why Excel functions have different names in other languages

If you paste =SUM(A1:A10) from an English tutorial into a German copy of Excel, you get a #NAME? error. Nothing is broken. German Excel calls that function SUMME, not SUM, and it may want a semicolon where you typed a comma. Excel shows function names in your interface language, so the same function has a different name for every reader. Once you know that, the errors stop being mysterious.

TL;DR: Excel shows function names in your display language, so SUM is SUMME in German and SOMME in French. If your region uses a comma as the decimal mark, the argument separator flips to a semicolon. The xlsx file stores functions in one neutral internal form, so a saved file opens correctly in any language. Only what you type and see changes.

Excel translates the names, not the function

Excel translates its whole interface for each language it ships in, and function names ride along with the menus and buttons. A user in Germany sees SUMME, a user in France sees SOMME, a user in Spain sees SUMA. The idea is that formulas read in your own language instead of forcing English on everyone.

That is a design choice, not a bug. If you only ever work in one language, you never notice it. Your function names match the words you already use. The friction shows up the moment content crosses languages, which is often now that tutorials, templates, and coworkers come from everywhere. A formula written in one language does not type cleanly into another, even though both do the exact same math.

Here are a few common names across four languages so the pattern is concrete:

English	German	French	Spanish
SUM	SUMME	SOMME	SUMA
AVERAGE	MITTELWERT	MOYENNE	PROMEDIO
IF	WENN	SI	SI
VLOOKUP	SVERWEIS	RECHERCHEV	BUSCARV

The everyday pain when formulas cross languages

The classic case is copying a formula from an English blog or video into a non-English Excel. You paste =SUM(A1:A10) into German Excel and it refuses, because that install expects =SUMME(A1:A10). The function underneath is the same. The name you typed is not the name this copy recognizes, so you get #NAME?.

It also trips up coworkers. Someone in France builds a sheet full of SOMME and MOYENNE, emails it to a teammate in the United States, and on a call the two of them describe the same formulas with different words. Neither is wrong. They are looking at the same logic rendered in their own language. The mix-up is only about naming, but it is real, and it wastes time when each person assumes the other made a mistake.

What actually gets stored in the file

Here is the part that clears up most of the worry. An xlsx file does not store your localized names. Inside, it keeps every function in one neutral, language-independent form, and each copy of Excel displays that using the local names for whoever opens the file. So a sheet built entirely in French SOMME formulas opens in an English Excel showing SUM, on its own, with no conversion step and no prompt.

That is why sharing files across languages mostly just works, even though typing across languages does not. The break happens at the keyboard, when you type a name from one language into an install expecting another. It does not happen at the file level, because the saved logic was never tied to a language. Open the same file in five languages and you get five sets of names over one unchanged set of calculations. The function-name translation is a display layer painted on top of that neutral core each time the file loads.

The comma versus semicolon separator

There is a second twist, and it catches people who already know about the name translation. It is tied to numbers, not language. In regions where the decimal mark is a comma, which is much of Europe, you write three and a half as 3,5. If Excel also used a comma to separate function arguments, SUM(3,5) would be ambiguous. Is that one argument of three and a half, or two arguments, three and five? To dodge that clash, Excel switches the argument separator to a semicolon in those regions.

So the separator follows your regional number format, not the function. That is why a formula copied from a forum can fail even after you fix the function names. The punctuation is wrong too, and Excel does not warn you which of the two problems it hit. Both the names and the separators have to match your locale before the formula takes.

A concrete before and after makes it obvious. Say you copy this from a US English tutorial:

=IF(SUM(A1:A10)>100, "over", "under")

Typed into a German copy of Excel set to a comma decimal, that same formula has to become:

=WENN(SUMME(A1:A10)>100; "über"; "unter")

Two things changed. IF and SUM became WENN and SUMME, and every argument comma turned into a semicolon. The >100 comparison and the cell range stayed the same, because those parts do not depend on language. Miss either change and Excel rejects the whole line.

How to translate a formula between languages

Translating a formula is two passes. Swap the function names, then fix the argument separators if the two regions disagree on the decimal mark. For a short formula you can do it by hand once you know the equivalents, SUM to SUMME, IF to WENN, VLOOKUP to SVERWEIS. For anything longer, or a language you do not read, looking up name after name is slow and easy to get wrong, and it is even easier to forget the separators once you are focused on the names.

A quicker route is a tool that already knows the official name maps and converts the whole formula at once, separators included. The free Excel formula translator at excel.hivly.net does that. Paste a formula in one language, pick the target language, and it rewrites the function names and adjusts the punctuation so the result types cleanly into the other locale. It runs in your browser, so the formula never leaves your machine, which matters when the sheet is something you would rather not upload.

One habit helps when you work across regions. Agree on which language a shared template is authored in, and write that down somewhere in the file. The stored logic is neutral, so anyone can open it and see their own names, but matching the typed examples and instructions to one agreed language keeps people from talking past each other.

Sources: VLOOKUP function name translations, excel-translator.de