diff --git a/xpath.c b/xpath.c
index 9f92055df..b8e197cc9 100644
--- a/xpath.c
+++ b/xpath.c
@@ -7910,7 +7910,7 @@ void
 xmlXPathLangFunction(xmlXPathParserContext *ctxt, int nargs) {
     xmlXPathObjectPtr val;
     xmlNodePtr cur;
-    xmlChar *theLang;
+    xmlChar *theLang = NULL;
     const xmlChar *lang;
     int ret = 0;
     int i;