Naming Conventions

Coverage

• Identifier morphology: verb-noun selection (get vs fetch vs load), plural vs singular for collections, prefix/suffix conventions (is / has / should for booleans, use for React hooks)
• Casing per artifact kind: kebab-case (file names, URL paths, CLI flags), camelCase (JavaScript/TypeScript variables and functions), PascalCase (types, classes, components, React JSX), snake_case (Python, SQL columns, environment variables when convention demands), SCREAMING_SNAKE_CASE (constants, env-var keys)
• Abbreviation rules: when an abbreviation is universally known (url, id, api), when it requires expansion (cust → customer), and when team-internal jargon must be avoided in public-facing names
• Name-vs-path semantics: the difference between what an artifact is called and where it lives; when name and path agree (file system) vs when they diverge (TypeScript module re-exports, npm-published package paths)
• Rename coordination: how to update every reference in the same commit, when to ship a deprecation alias, and how to detect missed call sites with grep
• Names that lie: identifiers whose words promise a behaviour the code does not deliver, and how to detect them (the function called getX that also writes; the boolean called isReady that means "should be ready"; the column called created that stores the ship date)
• Cross-cutting consistency: when a naming choice in one part of the codebase forces a related choice elsewhere (table column customer_id and TypeScript type Customer.id)

Philosophy

Names are the most-read part of any codebase. Every reader pays the cost of a bad name; only the author pays the cost of choosing well. The single most valuable property of a name is truthfulness: a name that lies — about what an artifact does, returns, or means — is more harmful than a name that is merely unclear. The second-most-valuable property is consistency with sibling names: a function called getOrders should sit alongside getCustomers, not loadCustomers. The third is brevity, and only the third — short names that mislead are not a virtue.

When a name does not fit, the answer is almost always to rename, not to add a comment explaining what the name "really" means. Comments rot; renames travel with the code.

Casing per Artifact Kind