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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-14T20:50:26+00:00

So I know the convention for naming M-M relationship tables in SQL is to

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So I know the convention for naming M-M relationship tables in SQL is to have something like so:

For tables User and Data the relationship table would be called

UserData
User_Data

or something similar (from here)

What happens then if you need to have multiple relationships between User and Data, representing each in its own table? I have a site I’m working on where I have two primary items and multiple independent M-M relationships between them. I know I could just use a single relationship table and have a field which determines the relationship type, but I’m not sure whether this is a good solution. Assuming I don’t go that route, what naming convention should I follow to work around my original problem?

To make it more clear, say my site is an auction site (it isn’t but the principle is similar). I have registered users and I have items, a user does not have to be registered to post an item but they do need to be to do anything else. I have table User which has info on registered users and Items which has info on posted items. Now a user can bid on an item, but they can also report a item (spam, etc.), both of these are M-M relationships. All that happens when either event occurs is that an email is generated, in my scenario I have no reason to keep track of the actual “report” or “bid” other than to know who bid/reported on what.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I don’t really see this as a true M-M mapping table. Those usually are JUST a mapping. From your example most of these will have additional information as well. For example, a table of bids, which would have a User and an Item, will probably have info on what the bid was, when it was placed, etc. I would call this table… wait for it… Bids.

    For reporting items you might want what was offensive about it, when it was placed, etc. Call this table OffenseReports or something.

    You can name tables whatever you want. I would just name them something that makes sense. I think the convention of naming them Table1Table2 is just because sometimes the relationships don’t make alot of sense to an outside observer.

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