diff --git a/lib/SimpleSAML/Locale/Language.php b/lib/SimpleSAML/Locale/Language.php
index b0ea40120a22b3b2ba676293ffae5c0bf9b2104e..ded7eeb7c43ba07f7c7a504bcb50e60a51dd1ff6 100644
--- a/lib/SimpleSAML/Locale/Language.php
+++ b/lib/SimpleSAML/Locale/Language.php
@@ -70,7 +70,10 @@ class Language
     private $customFunction;
 
     /**
-     * A list of languages supported with their names localized, indexed by ISO 639-2 code.
+     * A list of languages supported with their names localized.
+     * Indexed by something that mostly resembles ISO 639-1 code,
+     * with some charming SimpleSAML-specific variants...
+     * that must remain before 2.0 due to backwards compatibility
      *
      * @var array
      */
@@ -78,7 +81,7 @@ class Language
         'no'    => 'BokmĂĄl', // Norwegian BokmĂĄl
         'nn'    => 'Nynorsk', // Norwegian Nynorsk
         'se'    => 'Sámegiella', // Northern Sami
-        'sam'   => 'Ă…arjelh-saemien giele', // Southern Sami
+        'sma'   => 'Ă…arjelh-saemien giele', // Southern Sami
         'da'    => 'Dansk', // Danish
         'en'    => 'English',
         'de'    => 'Deutsch', // German