Clear Identity Naming is layer 1 of the Entity Architecture and Governance Framework (EP-9). It requires one standardized, canonical name for each entity, without ambiguous acronyms. It is mandatory, and it is scored pass or fail.
What layer 1 covers
Layer 1 covers the name an entity is known by. EP-9 requires one standardized, canonical entity name, written the same way everywhere, with no ambiguous acronym standing in for it. Every later layer refers to the entity by this name, so an error here is copied into all of them.
The layer is scored pass or fail because a partial identity does not exist. If a brand appears under three spellings, a crawler and a language model see three candidates and have to guess which one the page means.
Choosing the canonical name
Choosing the canonical name starts with the entity group it belongs to: an offer, a problem, a method or a trust entity. The name should say what the entity is in words a reader would search for, and any acronym should appear together with its full form, as in Decision Ladder Navigation (DLN).
An acronym on its own is ambiguous by default. EP9, for example, is also the name of an electric car, which is why this framework's own pages always write it as EP-9 next to its full name.
Where the name must match
The name must match in three places that machines read first: the page title, the H1 and the schema. Checkpoint CHK-EP-01 verifies exactly these three by DOM inspection, and the first domain of the Definition of Done awards 20 points when the name is standardized and the title and H1 are aligned.
Variants and synonyms still have a place, but not here. They are recorded in layer 5, where each one is mapped back to the same canonical URL.
What should happen to the other names an entity already uses?
The other names become synonyms, not rivals. Layer 1 fixes one canonical name, and layer 5 then maps three to five alternative names back to it in the page text. That way readers who search an older or shorter name still arrive at the same entity.
Checkpoints for layer 1
The checkpoint for layer 1 is a direct comparison of the entity name across the title, the H1 and the structured data of the entity page. It is inspected in the rendered DOM rather than in a template file. They are taken from the 15-point EP-9 technical audit checklist and keep their original identifiers, so an audit report can cite each one directly.
| Checklist ID | Audit layer | Mandatory verification requirement | Tool and method |
|---|---|---|---|
| CHK-EP-01 | L1 Identity | Exact canonical entity name used across Title, H1, and Schema. | DOM Inspection |
A page passes when all three strings are identical. Record every difference you find, including capitalization and punctuation, because each one is a separate spelling to a machine.