I feared as much. The problem is that you have a selection control which displays one thing but returns another (just as the standard ComboBox does when databound). If you use this select tag as your source you will therefore always get the value (the ... er ... "useless identifier code"). There simply is no other option. You therefore have little choice but to create a Dictionary which will enable you to reference the aforementioned useless identifier code and return the county name once you have obtained this value.