Embodiments are directed to implementing localized jump lists and to generating a locale-specific jump list. In one scenario, a computer system sends a synchronization request to receive a current contact list that includes a user's contacts. The computer system receives both a synchronized contact list and a locale-specific jump list, which includes jump header sort keys that indicate the relative sorting position of each jump header. The computer system receives a user input indicating that the user has selected a specified jump header and intends to jump to a specified point in the contact list. The computer system then jumps to the user-specified point in the contact list using the jump header sort key that corresponds to the selected jump header in the locale-specific jump list and displays the contact list to the user at the selected jump header that was jumped to using the jump header sort key.