I think it's possible that people are simply confused because the answers are the same for most decades. But one thing I would try maybe is setting the "value" of the different options, since that's what you're reading.

As I understand it, if no value is set, the browser should return the name instead, so the way you have it should work, but that may vary depending on browser.

EDIT: I tried to give an example, but lemmy keeps filtering out my explanation even if I enclose it in code tags. Hopefully you know what I mean.