One function. Smart detection. Country flags. Any locale. Zero dependencies.

Intl.DisplayNames already knows the name of every country, language, script, currency, and calendar — in 200+ locales. anyaround makes it a one-liner and adds the one thing Intl leaves out: flags.

Built for country pickers, language switchers, profile pages, and tables — anywhere a bare code should read like a person wrote it. No data files. No hardcoded flag maps. No config.

import { anyaround } from "anyaround";

anyaround("US");
// "United States"  — smart mode (default)

anyaround("US", { display: "flag-name" });
// "🇺🇸 United States"

anyaround("US", { locale: "ru" });
// "Соединенные Штаты"

anyaround("en");
// "English"

anyaround("Cyrl");
// "Cyrillic"

anyaround("EUR");
// "Euro"  — the name, not a rate

install

npm install anyaround

usage

anyaround(code);
anyaround(code, options);

code is a region, language, script, currency, or calendar identifier. In the default smart mode the kind is inferred from the code's shape; pass mode to pin it.

anyaround("FR");                          // "France"
anyaround("fr");                          // "French"
anyaround("419");                         // "Latin America and the Caribbean"
anyaround("Latn");                        // "Latin"
anyaround("JPY");                         // "Japanese Yen"

modes

The mode option picks how the code is read. Default is "smart".

smart

Auto-detects the kind from the code's shape:

| Shape | Detected as | Example | | ------------------------- | ----------- | ------------------- | | three digits | region | "419" | | four letters | script | "Latn" | | two uppercase letters | region | "US" | | three uppercase letters | currency | "USD" | | anything else | language | "en", "zh-Hant" |

anyaround("US", { locale: "en" });        // "United States"
anyaround("en", { locale: "en" });        // "English"
anyaround("Cyrl", { locale: "en" });      // "Cyrillic"
anyaround("EUR", { locale: "en" });       // "Euro"

Case is the tiebreaker between region ("IT") and language ("it"). When a code is ambiguous for you, pin it with mode. calendar is never auto-detected.

Reads: locale, style, display, fallback.

region

Countries and regions — ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 or UN M49 numeric. This is the only mode that carries a flag, surfaced via display.

anyaround("DE", { mode: "region", locale: "en" });                      // "Germany"
anyaround("DE", { mode: "region", display: "flag" });                   // "🇩🇪"
anyaround("DE", { mode: "region", display: "flag-name", locale: "en" }); // "🇩🇪 Germany"
anyaround("DE", { mode: "region", display: "name-flag", locale: "en" }); // "Germany 🇩🇪"
anyaround("419", { mode: "region", locale: "en" }); // "Latin America and the Caribbean" (no flag)

Flags are derived from the two-letter code via Unicode Regional Indicator Symbols — no image assets, no lookup table. Numeric M49 regions have no flag, so flag display values fall back to the name.

Reads: locale, style, display, fallback.

language

Languages — BCP 47 / ISO 639.

anyaround("en", { mode: "language", locale: "en" });     // "English"
anyaround("en-US", { mode: "language", locale: "en" });  // "American English"
anyaround("en-US", { mode: "language", locale: "en", languageDisplay: "standard" });
// "English (United States)"
anyaround("de", { mode: "language", locale: "fr" });     // "allemand"

languageDisplay toggles "dialect" (default, "American English") vs "standard" ("English (United States)").

Reads: locale, style, languageDisplay, fallback.

script

Writing systems — ISO 15924.

anyaround("Latn", { mode: "script", locale: "en" });   // "Latin"
anyaround("Cyrl", { mode: "script", locale: "en" });   // "Cyrillic"
anyaround("Hant", { mode: "script", locale: "en" });   // "Traditional Han"

Reads: locale, style, fallback.

currency

Currency names via Intl.DisplayNames — ISO 4217. (For formatting an amount like "€1,999.00", reach for anyamount.)

anyaround("EUR", { mode: "currency", locale: "en" });  // "Euro"
anyaround("JPY", { mode: "currency", locale: "en" });  // "Japanese Yen"
anyaround("USD", { mode: "currency", locale: "fr" });  // "dollar des États-Unis"

Reads: locale, style, fallback.

calendar

Calendar systems. Never smart-detected — always explicit.

anyaround("gregory", { mode: "calendar", locale: "en" });   // "Gregorian Calendar"
anyaround("islamic", { mode: "calendar", locale: "en" });   // "Islamic Calendar"

Reads: locale, style, fallback.

options

| Option | Type | Default | Used by | | ----------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------- | ------------- | | mode | "smart" \| "region" \| "language" \| "script" \| "currency" \| "calendar" | "smart" | — | | locale | string \| string[] | runtime locale | all | | style | "long" \| "short" \| "narrow" | "long" | all | | display | "name" \| "flag" \| "flag-name" \| "name-flag" | "name" | smart, region | | fallback | "code" \| "none" | "code" | all | | languageDisplay | "dialect" \| "standard" | "dialect" | language |

The options type is a discriminated union on mode — TypeScript only offers display in smart/region mode and languageDisplay in language mode, and rejects options that don't belong. From plain JavaScript the same holds at runtime: stray options are ignored, and an unknown mode throws a clear RangeError.

info

anyaroundInfo() accepts the same arguments and returns the structured record instead of a ready string — build your own output, or drive a <select>.

import { anyaroundInfo } from "anyaround";

anyaroundInfo("US", { locale: "en" });
// { code: "US", type: "region", name: "United States", flag: "🇺🇸", found: true }

anyaroundInfo("en", { locale: "fr" });
// { code: "en", type: "language", name: "anglais", flag: "", found: true }

anyaroundInfo("QZ", { mode: "region" });
// { code: "QZ", type: "region", name: "QZ", flag: "🇶🇿", found: false }

// React: a country dropdown with flags
countries.map((cc) => {
  const { code, name, flag } = anyaroundInfo(cc);
  return <option key={code} value={code}>{flag} {name}</option>;
});

flag is "" whenever the code is not a flag-bearing alpha-2 region. found is false when Intl had no name for the code — name is then the code (fallback: "code", the default) or "" (fallback: "none"), so you can tell a real hit from a miss.

locales

Pass any valid BCP 47 tag — including regional variants like en-GB, zh-TW, pt-BR. Fallback arrays also work.

anyaround("US", { locale: "ru" });   // "Соединенные Штаты"
anyaround("US", { locale: "de" });   // "Vereinigte Staaten"
anyaround("US", { locale: "ja" });   // "アメリカ合衆国"
anyaround("US", { locale: ["sr-Latn-RS", "en"] });

When omitted, native Intl uses the runtime locale.

Output is pure — no Date.now(), no environment reads — so server and client render identically. SSR-safe by construction.

vs the alternatives

| | anyaround | i18n-iso-countries | emoji-flags | world-countries | | ---------------- | :-------------: | :----------------: | :---------: | :-------------: | | bundled data | none (Intl) | ~1 file / locale | small | ~1MB JSON | | localized names | 200+ locales| bundled locales | no | no | | languages | yes | no | no | no | | scripts | yes | no | no | no | | currency names | yes | no | no | partial | | flags | yes | no | yes | emoji | | dependencies | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |

anyaround carries no country data at all — it borrows the ICU tables already in your runtime. That means zero payload, but also that exact strings track the runtime's ICU version.

limitations

Honest ones:

• No cities. Intl has no city display names. Regions and countries only.
• Names come from Intl and may vary between ICU versions — don't snapshot them across environments.
• No reverse lookup. Name → code is not provided; this maps codes to names, not the other way.
• Flags are alpha-2 only. Numeric M49 regions and non-region kinds have no flag; those fall back to the name. Flags are derived from the code's shape, not validated against a country list — any two-letter code yields a Regional-Indicator pair (e.g. "QZ" → 🇶🇿), even when found is false.
• Not every code is known everywhere. Older runtimes have thinner ICU data; fallback: "code" (the default) returns the code rather than throwing.

stability

anyaround follows semver. The 1.x API is stable — breaking changes wait for a major bump. Exact display strings come from Intl and may vary between ICU versions, so never assert on them across environments.

compatibility

Node.js 18+ · Chrome 81+ · Firefox 86+ · Safari 14.1+ · Edge Runtime · Cloudflare Workers · Deno

Intl.DisplayNames is required (widely available since 2021). CI runs the full suite on Node 20, 22, and 24.

part of the any* family

• anyamount — tiny smart number formatter. One function, three modes, any locale.
• anywhen — tiny smart date formatter. One function, three modes, any locale.
• anymany — tiny Intl list formatter. Sort and join string arrays in any locale.
• anyaround — you are here. anyaround.vercel.app

See the whole family at anyfamily.site.