Naming folders (sub directories) what's best?

Spain, Spanish, or Espaņa

[Mr Bo Jangles]

and same for:
Italy, Italian,or Italia
German, Germany, or Deutschland

these are folders that I intend to put the site pages in for these various language translations, but what's optimum for naming convention?

thanks all,

[Rumbas]

I'd go for the local language version. Eg. Deutschland, Danmark, Sverige etc. - remember that local characters in folders or file names can cause troubles server side though.

However it depends on the site in question. If you target say "German widgets" and your site is in English only, you might want to name the folder "german".

If you taget "Deutsche Dinge" and your content is in German, you might wanna name your folder "deutsch".

Use common sense :)

[Mr Bo Jangles]

OK, thanks Rumbas

[pagano]

In Italy we are usual to use abbreviations like "ita/it", "deu/de", "esp/es" and so on.
On my experience they work well.

[ThomasB]

I haven't run any tests on it but I think as long as people recognise a folder name as their language/region they're more likely to click. And "de" or "deutsch" is almost the same for most people imho.

[Mr Bo Jangles]

my question doesn't actually relate to what *people* recognize, but rather what computer search engine software recognizes - or likes.

(People won't see the names in order to be asked to make a decision.)

[ThomasB]

But people will see the URLs in the SERPs and decide wether they click on them or not. And if it doesn't sound interresting or the URL is somehow unusual the CTR might go down. But going for a word that is recognized by people as their language is ok. For SEs the path doesn't really make a difference as long as the content is in the right language.

[Mr Bo Jangles]

OK, understood, thanks for that clarification.

[sherwoodseo]

I'd go for a translation of your product name/keyword.

By way of example, would you be any more interested in a search result if it had "/english/" in the URL?

[Mr Bo Jangles]

understood sherwoodseo, many thanks.

[quiet_man]

I second the suggestion from Pagano. Just use the globally recognised language conventions. Both humans and SEs should recognise the significance, plus its only two letters. eg. Spainish = es, Italian = it, German = de. etc.
Library of Congress: Codes for Representation of Names of Languages [loc.gov]