verbose_name vs verbose_name_plural (Django)

Question

I created "Category" model with "verbose_name" and "verbose_name_plural" following some tutorial and the documentation of verbose_name and verbose_name_plural:

# "store/models.py"

from django.db import models

class Category(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    
    class Meta:
        verbose_name = "category"
        verbose_name_plural = "categories"

Then, the plural model name "Categories" is displayed in Django Admin as shown below:

Now, I wanted to display the singular model name "Category" but when I removed "verbose_name_plural" as shown below:

# "store/models.py"

from django.db import models

class Category(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    
    class Meta:
        verbose_name = "category"
        # verbose_name_plural = "categories"

"Categorys" was displayed instead of "Category" in Django Admin as shown below:

Now, my questions are:

• How to display the singular model name "Category" in Django Admin properly?
• What is the difference between "verbose_name" and "verbose_name_plural"?
• How to use "verbose_name" and "verbose_name_plural" properly?

Answer 1

If you don't explicitly set the attribute verbose_name_plural on a Model, Django adds 's' to the name of the model when displaying the name in the admin.

So, in your case, if you want the title text in the admin to be displayed same as your model name, set:

class Category(models.Model):
    ...
    class Meta:
         verbose_name = 'category'
         verbose_name_plural = 'Category'

Link to the Django Codebase.

Although, I would personally prefer the plural term on the title.