Named Element

A NamedElement is an OntoumlElement that can be assigned a name and other descriptive information. It is an abstract grouping that never appears directly in a document (it has no type value of its own); it only contributes the six descriptive properties below to its subtypes.

Property	Type	Description
name	languageString or null	The name of the element.
alternativeNames	languageString[]	Synonyms or alternatives to the main name — not translations of it.
description	languageString or null	A free-text account of the element.
editorialNotes	languageString[]	Notes about the development process; not to be confused with description.
creators	resource[]	Agents who contributed to creating the element.
contributors	resource[]	Agents who contributed to developing the element.

NamedElement also carries the identity properties id, created, and modified from OntoumlElement. Remember that every property is required: an absent single value is written as null and an absent collection as [].

Textual vs. agent metadata

The descriptive properties fall into two groups by datatype:

• name, alternativeNames, description, and editorialNotes are all languageString values, so each can hold the text in several languages at once. Keep the distinctions in mind: alternativeNames are synonyms rather than translations of name, and editorialNotes document the process rather than the subject the way description does.
• creators and contributors are arrays of resource values, identifying the agents behind the element rather than describing it.

Subtypes

NamedElement has three concrete/abstract descendants:

• Project — the ontology container.
• ModelElement — the abstract root of the abstract syntax, and thus of all its model-element subtypes (classes, relations, properties, generalizations, packages, and so on).
• Diagram — a named element in the concrete syntax.

Shared properties

Since NamedElement is abstract, it is never serialized on its own. Its properties appear inside every named element, alongside the identity block:

{
  "id": "element_1",
  "created": "2024-09-03",
  "modified": null,
  "name": { "en": "Person" },
  "alternativeNames": [],
  "description": null,
  "editorialNotes": [],
  "creators": [],
  "contributors": []
}

See Project and the abstract syntax reference for complete, serializable objects that embed this block.