How to get UTC TimeZone DisplayName .NET 4.0? - .net-4.0

Question

I set a winforms combobox with the time zones DisplayName:
var zoneList = TimeZoneInfo
.GetSystemTimeZones()
.Where(z => z.BaseUtcOffset.Minutes == 0)
.Select(z => z.DisplayName);
It shows a list like this:
...
(UTC-01:00) Azores
(UTC-01:00) Cabo Verde Is.
(UTC) Casablanca
(UTC) Co-ordinated Universal Time
(UTC) Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London
(UTC) Monrovia, Reykjavik
(UTC+01:00) Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna
...
I want to sent the default item to (UTC) Co-ordinated Universal Time. However, TimeZoneInfo.Utc.DisplayName returns UTC. It is unusual because the upper enumeration shows different DisplayName.
TimeZoneInfo.FindSystemTimeZoneById("UTC") also returns "UTC".
TimeZoneInfo.FindSystemTimeZoneById("(UTC) Co-ordinated Universal Time") and TimeZoneInfo.FindSystemTimeZoneById("Co-ordinated Universal Time") do not work.
How to get the localized string that corresponds to shown in the enumeration (UTC) Co-ordinated Universal Time?
The only solution I can figure out is to store the string "(UTC) Co-ordinated Universal Time", but I'm afraid the upper list may change in different localization.

Answer 1

A few things:
The DisplayName is not the ID. Only the values returned by the Id property are suitable for use with the FindSystemTimeZoneById method.
For your dropdown list, you should show the DisplayName, but you should store only the Id.
The DisplayName, StandardName and DaylightName properties are localized by the operating system, not by the globalization features of the .NET Framework.
The IDs will always be in English. They will never change for localization.
You should never show the IDs to the end-user or interpret them in any particular way. There are many different conflicting conventions used, and some that are just made up. See the section on Windows time zones in the timezone tag wiki for some examples.
"Coordinated" is a single non-hyphenated word. These are correct in Windows, so I think you must have added the hyphen yourself.
Recognize that the offsets shown in the display names are just the base offsets. They do not indicate whether or not the time zone adjusts for daylight saving time or not. Nor do the offsets in this list change when daylight saving time is in effect.
You are correct that TimeZoneInfo.Utc.DisplayName == "UTC", and so does TimeZoneInfo.FindSystemTimeZoneById("UTC").DisplayName. However, the UTC entry returned by TimeZoneInfo.GetSystemTimeZones() has the full form of the display name: "(UTC) Coordinated Universal Time". Therefore, if you're displaying a dropdown list by enumerating the results from TimeZoneInfo.GetSystemTimeZones(), then you can just use the results as-is.
But if you want to get that display name directly, you will either have to do this:
string s = TimeZoneInfo.GetSystemTimeZones().First(x => x.Id == "UTC").DisplayName;
Or, this:
string key = #"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Time Zones\UTC";
string s = Registry.GetValue(key, "Display", null) as string;
Again, remember that all localization of time zone display names is done by the operating system. Therefore, this approach works fine for Windows desktop applications, but doesn't make a whole lot of sense for web apps. Also, if your application supports multiple languages internally, you won't be able to rely on .NET Globalization for any time zone display names. In that scenario, you will need to provide your own source of display names, perhaps in a .resx file, or you can look into using my TimeZoneNames library.

Answer 2

Hmm, I found the answer by printing the time zone's Id.
The desired string is printed with:
TimeZoneInfo.FindSystemTimeZoneById("GMT Standard Time"); // Wrong
Edit:
As Matt Johnson noted, the above code shows the London time zone.
Here is another try:
TimeZoneInfo.GetSystemTimeZones().First(t=>t.Id=="UTC").DisplayName