Namespace

A namespace is the technical term for the complete set of possible names for a given class of objects. For example, an address space is the namespace for main memory.

More than one namespace may be applied to a given set of objects (e.g. network interfaces, which generally have an address in the physical network's namespace, as well as in one or more protocol suites). In such cases, there generally needs to be some way of mapping from one set of names to the other (whether unidirectional or bidirectional will depend on how they are being used).