Question

The JSON spec says that JSON is an object or an array. In the case of an object,

An object structure is represented as a pair of curly brackets
surrounding zero or more name/value pairs (or members). A name is a
string. …

And later, the spec says that a string is surrounded in quotes.

Why?

Thus,

{"Property1":"Value1","Property2":18}

and not

{Property1:"Value1",Property2:18}

Question 1: why not allow the name in the name/value pairs to be unquoted identifiers?

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Question 2: Is there a semantic difference between the two representations above, when evaluated in Javascript?

Answer 1

Question 1: why not allow the name in the name/value pairs to be unquoted identifiers?

The design philosophy of JSON is “Keep it simple”

“Quote names with "“ is a lot simpler than “You may quote names with " or ' but you don’t have to, unless they contain certain characters (or combinations of characters that would make it a keyword) and ' or " may need to be quoted depending on what delimiter you selected”.

Question 2: Is there a semantic difference between the two representations above, when evaluated in Javascript?

No. In JavaScript they are identical.