Non-Latin app names: how common are they in top results?

A name counts when it contains at least one letter whose Unicode script is not Latin, such as Han, Kana, Hangul, Thai, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew or Greek. Digits, emoji and punctuation do not count. A name that mixes Latin and local script counts as non-Latin, so the figures do not say how many names are written fully in the local language.

The local column uses 19 candidate local-language phrases per storefront and the English column uses 20 English phrases (10 results counted per search).

CJK storefronts. Even English queries bring up mostly non-Latin names in Japan (71%), South Korea (61%), Taiwan (61%) and Hong Kong (53%). The apps that rank for an English phrase there often carry local-script names. The related name-length study shows these names are also longer in bytes than in characters.

Middle group. In Bulgaria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE and Israel, 15% to 23% of top names for local searches used non-Latin letters. Most top results are still Latin-script names.

Mostly Latin even for local searches. Thailand (8%), Greece (3%) and Ukraine (2%) show top-10 lists dominated by Latin-script names even when the query is in the local language. One explanation is that apps there keep an international brand name; another is that the candidate translations were weak. The data does not decide between them, and the translations are unverified.

English queries were almost never answered with non-Latin names in the second and third groups (1% to 3%).

If you localize into a language with its own script, the table suggests that in Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong many top-ranking apps already use local-script names, while in Greece, Ukraine and Thailand they mostly do not in this sample. That is a correlation in one sample, and it does not show that a local-script name helps or hurts ranking. The Japanese localization guide covers how that language is searched and counted. Because the API returns neither subtitles nor the keyword field, nothing here says which words those apps use in hidden fields. Volume and difficulty on related pages are LocalASO estimates from rating counts, not Apple search counts.

12 storefronts, 19 to 20 searches each, one snapshot on 2026-11-01. The local phrases are candidate translations. China mainland is not among the 52 storefronts and was not studied. Details: methodology page.

LocalASO checks each keyword in the storefront's own language across 52 storefronts, including all 12 above. A Mac app, one-time $29, license key required to run. See pricing.