Why Excel functions have different names in other languages

You copy a formula from an English tutorial, paste it into your German copy of Excel, and it just throws an error. The function names are different there. SUM is SUMME, AVERAGE is MITTELWERT, and the comma between arguments might need to be a semicolon. Nothing is broken; Excel translated the language of formulas to match yours, and knowing why saves a lot of confusion when sheets cross borders.

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

Why Excel translates function names at all

Microsoft localizes the entire Excel interface for each language it supports, and function names are treated as part of that interface, like menu items and button labels. So a user in Germany sees SUMME, a user in France sees SOMME, and a user in Spain sees SUMA. The intent is that formulas read naturally in your own language rather than forcing English on everyone.

This is a deliberate design choice, not a bug or a regional quirk. For most people who only ever work in one language, it is invisible and helpful: the function names match the words they would expect. The friction only appears when content crosses languages, which happens far more now that tutorials, templates and colleagues span the globe. A formula written in one language does not type cleanly into another, even though both describe the same calculation.

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 copy expects =SUMME(A1:A10). The function is identical underneath, but the name you typed is not the name this installation recognizes. Same calculation, wrong vocabulary, instant error.

It also bites collaborators. A colleague in France builds a sheet full of SOMME and MOYENNE, emails it to a teammate in the United States, and the two of them describe the same formulas using different words on a call. Neither is wrong. They are seeing the same logic rendered in their own languages. The confusion is purely about naming, but it is real, and it wastes time when people assume the other person made a mistake.

What actually gets stored in the file

Here is the part that resolves most of the worry: an xlsx file does not store your localized names. Internally it keeps functions in a neutral, language-independent form, and each copy of Excel displays them 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, automatically, with no conversion step.

That is why sharing files across locales mostly just works, even though typing across locales does not. The breakage happens at the keyboard, when you type a name from one language into an installation expecting another. It does not happen at the file level, because the saved logic was never tied to a language in the first place. Open the same file in five languages and you get five sets of names over one unchanged set of calculations.

The comma versus semicolon separator

There is a second twist that surprises people, and it is tied to numbers, not language. In regions where the decimal mark is a comma, like 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: one argument of three-and-a-half, or two arguments? To avoid that clash, Excel switches the argument separator to a semicolon in those regions.

So the same formula reads =SUM(A1, B1) in a comma-decimal English locale and =SUMME(A1; B1) in German. The semicolon is not part of the function name; it follows your regional number settings. This is why a formula copied from one region can fail even after you fix the function names: the separators are wrong too. Both the names and the punctuation have to match the target locale before the formula will take.

How to translate a formula between languages

Translating a formula means two passes: swap the function names, then fix the argument separators if the regions differ on decimal marks. For a short formula you can do it by hand once you know the equivalents, SUM to SUMME, IF to WENN, VLOOKUP to SVERWEIS, and so on. For anything longer, or a language you do not read, looking up dozens of names by hand is slow and error-prone.

A faster route is a tool that knows the official name maps and converts the whole formula at once, including the separators. The free Excel formula translator at excel.hivly.net does exactly that: paste a formula in one language, pick the target language, and it rewrites the function names and adjusts 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 anywhere.

One more habit helps when you collaborate across regions: agree on which language a shared template is authored in, and note it somewhere in the file. Since the stored logic is neutral, anyone can open it and see their own names, but matching the typed examples and instructions to one agreed language keeps everyone from talking past each other.