What should I name a table that maps two tables together?

sql database database-design naming-conventions data-modeling
devuxer picture devuxer · Nov 28, 2009 · Viewed 70.8k times · Source

Let's say I have two tables:

Table: Color
Columns: Id, ColorName, ColorCode

Table: Shape
Columns: Id, ShapeName, VertexList

What should I call the table that maps color to shape?

Table: ???
Columns: ColorId, ShapeId

Answer

tosh picture tosh · Nov 28, 2009

There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things
-- Phil Karlton

Coming up with a good name for a table that represents a many-to-many relationship makes the relationship easier to read and understand. Sometimes finding a great name is not trivial but usually it is worth to spend some time thinking about.

An example: Reader and Newspaper.

A Newspaper has many Readers and a Reader has many Newspapers

You could call the relationship NewspaperReader but a name like Subscription might convey better what the table is about.

The name Subscription also is more idiomatic in case you want to map the table to objects later on.

The convention for naming many-to-many tables is a concatenation of the names of both tables that are involved in the relation. ColourShape would be a sensible default in your case. That said, I think Nick D came up with two great suggestions: Style and Texture.

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