A Conceptual Model for a Web-scale Entity Name system

The problem of identity and reference is receiving increasing attention in the (semantic) web community and is emerging as one of the key features which distinguish traditional knowledge representation from knowledge representation on the web with respect to data interlinking and knowledge integration on a large scale. As part of this debate, the OKKAM project proposed the creation of an Entity Name System which provides rigid identifiers, named OKKAMids, for any type of concrete and particular entities, and links OKKAMids to existing identifiers which have been created elsewhere for the same entity. The introduction of these identifiers raises some practical and conceptual concerns. In this paper we address them by extending two proposed ontologies (IRE and IRW) to accomodate the notion of OKKAMid, describe their formal properties, illustrate why they may play an important role in the construction of the Semantic Web and discuss how they can be integrated with other approaches for mapping URIs onto each others.