OK, so let's run this pop fly out (sorry, you'll have to look it up).
For clarinet, flute, and saxophone the term "soprano" applies to the instrument where six fingers down gives a D just above middle C on the piano, or in the case of the Bb instruments, it gives middle C. However, most people refer to the common flute as "flute", "concert flute", or "C flute".
For all three of these families, "Alto" means a fourth or fifth below that: alto clarinet in Eb, alto sax in Eb, alto flute in G.
Unfortunately, after that it all goes to hell. An octave below the soprano voice is called "tenor" for saxophones and "bass" for flute and clarinet. An octave and a half below the soprano is called "baritone" for saxophone; "contra-alto_ for clarinet, and the flute makers can't agree on what to call it. Then two octaves below the soprano is "bass" on saxophone, "contrabass" for clarinet and flute. There's a rare contrabass saxophone, two and a half octaves below the soprano. I don't think flute or clarinet has anything in this position, but I'm not sure.
OK, let's go upward. On sax you have the sopranino a fourth above the soprano. Flute has the rare Eb which is ALSO called "soprano" at times, even though it's almost an octave above the alto flute, and there's the even more vanishingly rare G flute called "treble" (well, hell, everything above middle C on the piano is "treble", so what does THAT mean?); clarinet has the Eb clarinet which everyone just calls "Eb" but could be called "sopranino". Well, that's the top of the normal sax and clarinet families, but we have the flute an octave above the soprano flute, which is called the piccolo ("little") but could, I guess, be called the "sopranissimo" flute. If we followed saxophone terminology, the Eb and G flutes might be called sopranino flutes by analogy with the sopranino saxophone.
As far as I know all these names are the same in German (you may correct me on this), so the statement that "in German the terminology is exact" I suspect is not really accurate. I do know that Theobald Boehm called the flute in G the "bass flute" where we today call it the "alto flute".
It's true that in the US the Eb clarinet is largely a concert band instrument but it IS considered a standard orchestral instrument, just not one that's used very much. Kind of like English horn, heckelphone, or celesta. It's my understanding that the Eb flute may have been made to allow flute players to play Eb clarinet parts when there wasn't an Eb clarinet player competent to cover them - but the tone is quite different. Honestly there's not much use for the Eb flute which is why they're not made any more (except for one maker that makes a tiny number of INCREDIBLY EXPENSIVE Eb flutes). I"m unaware of any use for or makers of G flutes, but it'd be pretty handy for some of that Cuban charanga music where ordinary C flute players have to spend all their time wiggling around in the third octave (and up into the fourth!!)
No one in the US calls a recorder a "flute" any more. I'd guess that's because when the instruments started coming over the Atlantic the transverse flute was already well established in European music, whereas of course Europeans were there and playing "recorders" before there ever WAS a transverse flute, so to Europeans there are TWO basic "flutes" the block or fipple flute and the transverse.
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