Collaborative naming in distributed systems

The process by which humans name objects is highly flexible and dynamic. This is particularly true of group work where common names for objects may be gradually established through the processes of proposal, translation and adoption. This paper introduces a naming model, for use mostly by humans, which supports this process of group naming and specifically allows names to be ambiguous and changeable. The model defines techniques for resolving names, translating names between different group members and proposing common names for objects within a group. The paper also discusses how individual naming contexts which support these facilities could be federated into a structured namespace and how the process of flexible name resolution can therefore be extended to large scale distributed environments. The resulting functionality contrasts strongly with existing, often hierarchical, naming models which deliberately attempt to reduce ambiguity of names and which provide minimal support for managing name changes. The intention is that the proposed naming model could be layered on top of existing naming services in order to provide additional human and group oriented support for naming.