diff --git a/docs/configuration.md b/docs/configuration.md
index 0482e9ee4..a22171ce9 100644
--- a/docs/configuration.md
+++ b/docs/configuration.md
@@ -1105,12 +1105,21 @@ should be a valid crontab(5) expression describing when to run.
 
 #### [`PAPERLESS_SEARCH_LANGUAGE=<language>`](#PAPERLESS_SEARCH_LANGUAGE) {#PAPERLESS_SEARCH_LANGUAGE}
 
-: Sets the stemmer language for the full-text search index (e.g. `en`, `de`, `fr`).
+: Sets the stemmer language for the full-text search index.
 Stemming improves recall by matching word variants (e.g. "running" matches "run").
 Changing this setting causes the index to be rebuilt automatically on next startup.
-Supported values are the language names accepted by Tantivy's built-in stemmer.
+An invalid value raises an error at startup.
 
-    Defaults to `""` (no stemming).
+: Use the ISO 639-1 two-letter code (e.g. `en`, `de`, `fr`). Lowercase full names
+(e.g. `english`, `german`, `french`) are also accepted. The capitalized names shown
+in the [Tantivy Language enum](https://docs.rs/tantivy/latest/tantivy/tokenizer/enum.Language.html)
+documentation are **not** valid — use the lowercase equivalent.
+
+: If not set, paperless infers the language from
+[`PAPERLESS_OCR_LANGUAGE`](#PAPERLESS_OCR_LANGUAGE). If the OCR language has no
+Tantivy stemmer equivalent, stemming is disabled.
+
+    Defaults to unset (inferred from `PAPERLESS_OCR_LANGUAGE`).
 
 #### [`PAPERLESS_ADVANCED_FUZZY_SEARCH_THRESHOLD=<float>`](#PAPERLESS_ADVANCED_FUZZY_SEARCH_THRESHOLD) {#PAPERLESS_ADVANCED_FUZZY_SEARCH_THRESHOLD}
 
diff --git a/src/documents/search/_schema.py b/src/documents/search/_schema.py
index d41aeeb55..cb5b85e3e 100644
--- a/src/documents/search/_schema.py
+++ b/src/documents/search/_schema.py
@@ -94,7 +94,7 @@ def _needs_rebuild(index_dir: Path) -> bool:
     if not language_file.exists():
         logger.info("Search index language sentinel missing - rebuilding.")
         return True
-    if language_file.read_text().strip() != settings.SEARCH_LANGUAGE:
+    if language_file.read_text().strip() != (settings.SEARCH_LANGUAGE or ""):
         logger.info("Search index language changed - rebuilding.")
         return True
 
@@ -113,7 +113,7 @@ def wipe_index(index_dir: Path) -> None:
 def _write_sentinels(index_dir: Path) -> None:
     """Write schema version and language sentinel files so the next index open can skip rebuilding."""
     (index_dir / ".schema_version").write_text(str(SCHEMA_VERSION))
-    (index_dir / ".schema_language").write_text(settings.SEARCH_LANGUAGE)
+    (index_dir / ".schema_language").write_text(settings.SEARCH_LANGUAGE or "")
 
 
 def open_or_rebuild_index(index_dir: Path | None = None) -> tantivy.Index:
diff --git a/src/documents/search/_tokenizer.py b/src/documents/search/_tokenizer.py
index ed30d5c37..628b9dcdb 100644
--- a/src/documents/search/_tokenizer.py
+++ b/src/documents/search/_tokenizer.py
@@ -49,7 +49,7 @@ _LANGUAGE_MAP: dict[str, str] = {
 SUPPORTED_LANGUAGES: frozenset[str] = frozenset(_LANGUAGE_MAP)
 
 
-def register_tokenizers(index: tantivy.Index, language: str) -> None:
+def register_tokenizers(index: tantivy.Index, language: str | None) -> None:
     """
     Register all custom tokenizers on *index*. Must be called on every Index
     instance — tantivy requires re-registration at each open.
@@ -66,7 +66,7 @@ def register_tokenizers(index: tantivy.Index, language: str) -> None:
     index.register_fast_field_tokenizer("simple_analyzer", _simple_analyzer())
 
 
-def _paperless_text(language: str) -> tantivy.TextAnalyzer:
+def _paperless_text(language: str | None) -> tantivy.TextAnalyzer:
     """Main full-text tokenizer for content, title, etc: simple -> remove_long(65) -> lowercase -> ascii_fold [-> stemmer]"""
     builder = (
         tantivy.TextAnalyzerBuilder(tantivy.Tokenizer.simple())
diff --git a/src/paperless/settings/__init__.py b/src/paperless/settings/__init__.py
index 4fee16dde..3522b3187 100644
--- a/src/paperless/settings/__init__.py
+++ b/src/paperless/settings/__init__.py
@@ -21,6 +21,7 @@ from paperless.settings.custom import parse_hosting_settings
 from paperless.settings.custom import parse_ignore_dates
 from paperless.settings.custom import parse_redis_url
 from paperless.settings.parsers import get_bool_from_env
+from paperless.settings.parsers import get_choice_from_env
 from paperless.settings.parsers import get_float_from_env
 from paperless.settings.parsers import get_int_from_env
 from paperless.settings.parsers import get_list_from_env
@@ -86,8 +87,6 @@ EMPTY_TRASH_DIR = (
 MEDIA_LOCK = MEDIA_ROOT / "media.lock"
 INDEX_DIR = DATA_DIR / "index"
 
-SEARCH_LANGUAGE: str = os.getenv("PAPERLESS_SEARCH_LANGUAGE", "")
-
 ADVANCED_FUZZY_SEARCH_THRESHOLD: float | None = get_float_from_env(
     "PAPERLESS_ADVANCED_FUZZY_SEARCH_THRESHOLD",
 )
@@ -1040,10 +1039,55 @@ def _get_nltk_language_setting(ocr_lang: str) -> str | None:
     return iso_code_to_nltk.get(ocr_lang)
 
 
+def _get_search_language_setting(ocr_lang: str) -> str | None:
+    """
+    Determine the Tantivy stemmer language.
+
+    If PAPERLESS_SEARCH_LANGUAGE is explicitly set, it is validated against
+    the languages supported by Tantivy's built-in stemmer and returned as-is.
+    Otherwise the primary Tesseract language code from PAPERLESS_OCR_LANGUAGE
+    is mapped to the corresponding ISO 639-1 code understood by Tantivy.
+    Returns None when unset and the OCR language has no Tantivy stemmer.
+    """
+    explicit = os.environ.get("PAPERLESS_SEARCH_LANGUAGE")
+    if explicit is not None:
+        # Lazy import avoids any app-loading order concerns; _tokenizer has no
+        # Django dependencies so this is safe.
+        from documents.search._tokenizer import SUPPORTED_LANGUAGES
+
+        return get_choice_from_env("PAPERLESS_SEARCH_LANGUAGE", SUPPORTED_LANGUAGES)
+
+    # Infer from the primary Tesseract language code (ISO 639-2/T → ISO 639-1)
+    primary = ocr_lang.split("+", maxsplit=1)[0].lower()
+    _ocr_to_search: dict[str, str] = {
+        "ara": "ar",
+        "dan": "da",
+        "nld": "nl",
+        "eng": "en",
+        "fin": "fi",
+        "fra": "fr",
+        "deu": "de",
+        "ell": "el",
+        "hun": "hu",
+        "ita": "it",
+        "nor": "no",
+        "por": "pt",
+        "ron": "ro",
+        "rus": "ru",
+        "spa": "es",
+        "swe": "sv",
+        "tam": "ta",
+        "tur": "tr",
+    }
+    return _ocr_to_search.get(primary)
+
+
 NLTK_ENABLED: Final[bool] = get_bool_from_env("PAPERLESS_ENABLE_NLTK", "yes")
 
 NLTK_LANGUAGE: str | None = _get_nltk_language_setting(OCR_LANGUAGE)
 
+SEARCH_LANGUAGE: str | None = _get_search_language_setting(OCR_LANGUAGE)
+
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 # Email Preprocessors                                                         #
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