Hi Max,
This is just a feature request that I hope might be considered someday (it was the same in CF6):
I understand that the current approach works well for languages without special characters, but unfortunately, Latvian has quite a few special characters, and this creates a bit of a problem.
Here’s the issue: when a Field Name is created automatically, it’s really convenient - until it strips out special characters entirely. For languages like Latvian, this often results in a Field Name that doesn’t make much sense.
Since most coders prefer concise and meaningful field names, I often have to manually rewrite them. But if I set a custom Field Name first - adding or modifying the Label later overwrites my custom Field Name. This means I have to redo it again, and if I’m defining a custom database save, it can lead to errors.
For example, if I set a label in Latvian like Šūnas noņemšana, the generated Field Name becomes something like nas_no_em_ana, which is meaningless. Ideally, it would generate something like sunas_nonemsana, which can be easily achieved by replacing special characters with their closest equivalents (e.g., ā → a, š → s, etc.).
The main issue is that even after manually correcting the Field Name, if I update the Label later, the Field Name gets overwritten again. It would be great if there were a way to preserve the manually set Field Name or improve the automatic generation for languages with special characters.
Thanks a lot for considering this, and I hope it might be improved in a future update!
Sincerely,Elita