Namenotes

Namenotes are metadata annotations attached to proper names within textual materials, databases, or knowledge bases to provide contextual information that aids identification, disambiguation, and interpretation. The term blends the idea of a name with accompanying notes or metadata, and it is used across fields such as libraries, digital humanities, and information systems.

A typical namenote can include a range of information. Examples are alternative spellings and transliterations, birth and death years, titles, occupations, geographic or temporal qualifiers, familial relationships, and source citations. When two or more individuals share a name, namenotes help distinguish them by adding qualifiers such as "William Smith (chemist, b. 1816)" or "Maria Garcia (writer, 1950–2010)." They may also capture linguistic notes, etymology, or provenance information about the name itself.

Implementation approaches vary. Namenotes can reside in structured database fields, be part of authority control files, or be encoded in knowledge graphs and bibliographic metadata. They are used to improve entity resolution, search accuracy, and cross-linking of records, and they support automated name matching in multilingual or historical corpora.

Common use cases include library catalogs, academic databases, archival descriptions, digital archives, and customer relationship management systems. While naamnotes enhance data quality and discoverability, they require standards for consistency, ongoing maintenance, and attention to privacy when notes contain sensitive information. Related concepts include disambiguation, authority control, metadata, named entity recognition, and entity linking.