name - Naming Table (OpenType 1.4)
The naming table allows multilingual strings to be associated with the OpenType™ font file.
These strings can represent copyright notices, font names, family names, style names, and so on. To keep this table short, the font manufacturer may wish to make a limited set of entries in some small set of languages; later, the font can be “localized” and the strings translated or added. Other parts of the OpenType font file that require these strings can then refer to them simply by their index number. Clients that need a particular string can look it up by its platform ID, character encoding ID, language ID and name ID. Note that some platforms may require single byte character strings, while others may require double byte strings.
For historical reasons, some applications which install fonts perform version control using Macintosh platform (platform ID 1) strings from the 'name' table. Because of this, we strongly recommend that the 'name' table of all fonts include Macintosh platform strings and that the syntax of the version number (name id 5) follows the guidelines given in this document.
The Naming Table is organized as follows:
Type | Name | Description |
---|---|---|
USHORT | format | Format selector (=0). |
USHORT | count | Number of name records. |
USHORT | stringOffset | Offset to start of string storage (from start of table). |
NameRecord | nameRecord[count] | The name records where count is the number of records. |
(Variable) | Storage for the actual string data. |
Each NameRecord looks like this:
Type | Name | Description |
---|---|---|
USHORT | platformID | Platform ID. |
USHORT | encodingID | Platform-specific encoding ID. |
USHORT | languageID | Language ID. |
USHORT | nameID | Name ID. |
USHORT | length | String length (in bytes). |
USHORT | offset | String offset from start of storage area (in bytes). |
Following are the descriptions of the four kinds of ID. Note that the specific values listed here are the only ones that are predefined; new ones may be added by registry with Apple Developer Technical Support. Similar to the character encoding table, the NameRecords are sorted by platform ID, then platform-specific ID, then language ID, and then by name ID.
Platform IDs, Platform-specific encoding IDs and Language IDs
Platform ID | Platform name | Platform-specific encoding IDs | Language IDs |
---|---|---|---|
0 | Unicode | Various | None |
1 | Macintosh | Script manager code | Various |
2 | ISO [deprecated] | ISO encoding [deprecated] | None |
3 | Microsoft | Microsoft encoding | Various |
4 | Custom | Custom | None |
Note that platform ID 2 (ISO) has been deprecated as of OpenType Specification v1.3. It was intended to represent ISO/IEC 10646, as opposed to Unicode; both standards have identical character code assignments.
Platform ID values 240 through 255 are reserved for user-defined platforms. The DTS registry will never assign these values to a registered platform.
Unicode platform-specific encoding IDs (platform ID = 0)
Encoding ID | Description |
---|---|
0 | Unicode 1.0 semantics |
1 | Unicode 1.1 semantics |
2 | ISO 10646:1993 semantics |
3 | Unicode 2.0 and onwards semantics, Unicode BMP only. |
4 | Unicode 2.0 and onwards semantics, Unicode full repertoire. |
A new encoding ID for the Unicode platform will be assigned if a new version of Unicode moves characters, in order to properly specify character code semantics. The distinction between Unicode platform-specific encoding IDs 1 and 2 is for historical reasons only; Unicode 1.1 is in fact identical in repertoire and encoding to ISO 10646:1993 (before any amendments).
There are currently no language IDs defined for the Unicode platform. This means that it can be used for encodings in the 'cmap' table but not for strings in the 'name' table.
Microsoft platform-specific encoding IDs (platform ID= 3)
Platform ID | Encoding ID | Description |
---|---|---|
3 | 0 | Symbol |
3 | 1 | Unicode BMP only |
3 | 2 | ShiftJIS |
3 | 3 | PRC |
3 | 4 | Big5 |
3 | 5 | Wansung |
3 | 6 | Johab |
3 | 7 | Reserved |
3 | 8 | Reserved |
3 | 9 | Reserved |
3 | 10 | Unicode full repertoire |
When building a Unicode font for Windows, the platform ID should be 3 and the encoding ID should be 1. When building a symbol font for Windows, the platform ID should be 3 and the encoding ID should be 0. When building a font that will be used on the Macintosh, the platform ID should be 1 and the encoding ID should be 0.
Microsoft Language IDs (platform ID = 3)
The language ID (LCID in the table below) refers to a value which identifies the language in which a particular string is written. Fifty of the language ID’s assigned by Microsoft are listed below, along with their corresponding code pages. There are 85 additional language ID’s assigned. For a full list, please see the Microsoft Global Development site or Knowledge Base article Q224804.
Primary Language | Locale Name | LCID | Win CP | OEM CP |
---|---|---|---|---|
Albanian | Albania | (041c; SQI) | ||
Basque | Basque | (042D; EUQ) | 1252 | 850 |
Byelorussian | Byelorussia | (0423, BEL) | 1251 | 866 |
Bulgarian | Bulgaria | (0402, BGR) | 1251 | 866 |
Catalan | Catalan | (0403; CAT) | 1252 | 850 |
Croatian | Croatian | (041a, SHL) | 1250 | 852 |
Czech | Czech | (0405; CSY) | 1250 | 852 |
Danish | Danish | (0406; DAN) | 1252 | 865 |
Dutch (2): | Dutch (Standard) | (0413; NLD) | 1252 | 850 |
Dutch (2): | Belgian (Flemish) | (0813; NLB) | 1252 | 850 |
English (6): | American | (0409; ENU) | 1252 | 437 |
English (6): | British | (0809; ENG) | 1252 | 850 |
English (6): | Australian | (0c09; ENA) | 1252 | 850 |
English (6): | Canadian | (1009; ENC) | 1252 | 850 |
English (6): | New Zealand | (1409; ENZ) | 1252 | 850 |
English (6): | Ireland | (1809; ENI) | 1252 | 850 |
Estonian | Estonia | (0425, ETI) | 1257 | 775 |
Finnish | Finnish | (040b; FIN) | 1252 | 850 |
French | French (Standard) | (040c; FRA) | 1252 | 850 |
French | Belgian | (080c; FRB) | 1252 | 850 |
French | Canadian | (0c0c; FRC) | 1252 | 850 |
French | Swiss | (100c; FRS) | 1252 | 850 |
French | Luxembourg | (140c; FRL) | 1252 | 850 |
German | German (Standard) | (0407; DEU) | 1252 | 850 |
German | Swiss | (0807; DES) | 1252 | 850 |
German | Austrian | (0c07; DEA) | 1252 | 850 |
German | Luxembourg | (1007; DEL) | 1252 | 850 |
German | Liechtenstein | (1407; DEC) | 1252 | 850 |
Greek | Greek | (0408; ELL) | 1253 | 737 or 8694 |
Hungarian | Hungarian | (040e; HUN) | 1250 | 852 |
Icelandic | Icelandic | (040F; ISL) | 1252 | 850 |
Italian (2): | Italian (Standard) | (0410; ITA) | 1252 | 850 |
Italian (2): | Swiss | (0810; ITS) | 1252 | 850 |
Latvian | Latvia | (0426, LVI) | 1257 | 775 |
Lithuanian | Lithuania | (0427, LTH) | 1257 | 775 |
Norwegian (2): | Norwegian (Bokmal) | (0414; NOR) | 1252 | 850 |
Norwegian (2): | Norwegian (Nynorsk) | (0814; NON) | 1252 | 850 |
Polish | Polish | (0415; PLK) | 1250 | 852 |
Portuguese (2): | Portuguese (Brazilian) | (0416; PTB) | 1252 | 850 |
Portuguese (2): | Portuguese (Standard) | (0816; PTG) | 1252 | 850 |
Romanian (2): | Romania | (0418, ROM) | 1250 | 852 |
Russian | Russian | (0419; RUS) | 1251 | 866 |
Slovak | Slovak | (041b; SKY) | 1250 | 852 |
Slovenian | Slovenia | (0424, SLV) | 1250 | 852 |
Spanish (3): | Spanish (Traditional Sort) | (040a; ESP) | 1252 | 850 |
Spanish (3): | Mexican | (080a; ESM) | 1252 | 850 |
Spanish (3): | Spanish (Modern Sort) | (0c0a; ESN) | 1252 | 850 |
Swedish | Swedish | (041D; SVE) | 1252 | 850 |
Turkish | Turkish | (041f; TRK) | 1254 | 857 |
Ukrainian | Ukraine | (0422, UKR) | 1251 | 866 |
- 4737 is default, but 869 (IBM Greek) will be available at setup time through the selection of a bogus Greek locale in Custom Setup.
Macintosh platform-specific encoding IDs (script manager codes), (platform ID = 1)
Code | Script | Code | Script |
---|---|---|---|
0 | Roman | 17 | Malayalam |
1 | Japanese | 18 | Sinhalese |
2 | Chinese (Traditional) | 19 | Burmese |
3 | Korean | 20 | Khmer |
4 | Arabic | 21 | Thai |
5 | Hebrew | 22 | Laotian |
6 | Greek | 23 | Georgian |
7 | Russian | 24 | Armenian |
8 | RSymbol | 25 | Chinese (Simplified) |
9 | Devanagari | 26 | Tibetan |
10 | Gurmukhi | 27 | Mongolian |
11 | Gujarati | 28 | Geez |
12 | Oriya | 29 | Slavic |
13 | Bengali | 30 | Vietnamese |
14 | Tamil | 31 | Sindhi |
15 | Telugu | 32 | Uninterpreted |
16 | Kannada |
Macintosh language IDs (platform ID = 1)
Code | Language | Code | Language |
---|---|---|---|
0 | English | 59 | Pashto |
1 | French | 60 | Kurdish |
2 | German | 61 | Kashmiri |
3 | Italian | 62 | Sindhi |
4 | Dutch | 63 | Tibetan |
5 | Swedish | 64 | Nepali |
6 | Spanish | 65 | Sanskrit |
7 | Danish | 66 | Marathi |
8 | Portuguese | 67 | Bengali |
9 | Norwegian | 68 | Assamese |
10 | Hebrew | 69 | Gujarati |
11 | Japanese | 70 | Punjabi |
12 | Arabic | 71 | Oriya |
13 | Finnish | 72 | Malayalam |
14 | Greek | 73 | Kannada |
15 | Icelandic | 74 | Tamil |
16 | Maltese | 75 | Telugu |
17 | Turkish | 76 | Sinhalese |
18 | Croatian | 77 | Burmese |
19 | Chinese (Traditional) | 78 | Khmer |
20 | Urdu | 79 | Lao |
21 | Hindi | 80 | Vietnamese |
22 | Thai | 81 | Indonesian |
23 | Korean | 82 | Tagalong |
24 | Lithuanian | 83 | Malay (Roman script) |
25 | Polish | 84 | Malay (Arabic script) |
26 | Hungarian | 85 | Amharic |
27 | Estonian | 86 | Tigrinya |
28 | Latvian | 87 | Galla |
29 | Sami | 88 | Somali |
30 | Faroese | 89 | Swahili |
31 | Farsi/Persian | 90 | Kinyarwanda/Ruanda |
32 | Russian | 91 | Rundi |
33 | Chinese (Simplified) | 92 | Nyanja/Chewa |
34 | Flemish | 93 | Malagasy |
35 | Irish Gaelic | 94 | Esperanto |
36 | Albanian | 128 | Welsh |
37 | Romanian | 129 | Basque |
38 | Czech | 130 | Catalan |
39 | Slovak | 131 | Latin |
40 | Slovenian | 132 | Quenchua |
41 | Yiddish | 133 | Guarani |
42 | Serbian | 134 | Aymara |
43 | Macedonian | 135 | Tatar |
44 | Bulgarian | 136 | Uighur |
45 | Ukrainian | 137 | Dzongkha |
46 | Byelorussian | 138 | Javanese (Roman script) |
47 | Uzbek | 139 | Sundanese (Roman script) |
48 | Kazakh | 140 | Galician |
49 | Azerbaijani (Cyrillic script) | 141 | Afrikaans |
50 | Azerbaijani (Arabic script) | 142 | Breton |
51 | Armenian | 14 | Inuktitut |
52 | Georgian | 144 | Scottish Gaelic |
53 | Moldavian | 145 | Manx Gaelic |
54 | Kirghiz | 146 | Irish Gaelic (with dot above) |
55 | Tajiki | 147 | Tongan |
56 | Turkmen | 148 | Greek (polytonic) |
57 | Mongolian (Mongolian script) | 149 | Greenlandic |
58 | Mongolian (Cyrillic script) | 150 | Azerbaijani (Roman script) |
ISO specific encodings (platform ID=2) [Deprecated]
Code | ISO encoding |
---|---|
0 | 7-bit ASCII |
1 | ISO 10646 |
2 | ISO 8859-1 |
There are no ISO-specific language IDs.
Custom platform-specific encoding IDs (platform ID = 4)
ID | Custom encoding |
---|---|
0-255 | OTF Windows NT compatibility mapping |
In cases where a custom platform cmap is present for OTF Windows NT compatibility, the encoding ID must be set to the Windows charset value (in the range 0 to 255, inclusive) present in the .PFM file of the original Type 1 font. See the 'cmap' table for more details on the OTF Windows NT compatibility cmap.
There are currently no language IDs defined for the Custom platform. This means that it can be used for encodings in the 'cmap' table but not for strings in the 'name' table.
Name IDs
The following name IDs are pre-defined, and they apply to all platforms unless indicated otherwise. Name IDs 21 to 255, inclusive, are reserved for future standard names. Name IDs 256 to 32767, inclusive, are reserved for font-specific names such as those referenced by a font’s layout features.
Code | Meaning |
---|---|
0 | Copyright notice. |
1 | Font Family name. Up to four fonts can share the Font Family name, forming a font style linking group (regular, italic, bold, bold italic - as defined by OS/2.fsSelection bit settings). |
2 | Font Subfamily name. The Font Subfamily name distiguishes the font in a group with the same Font Family name (name ID 1). This is assumed to address style (italic, oblique) and weight (light, bold, black, etc.). A font with no particular differences in weight or style (e.g. medium weight, not italic and fsSelection bit 6 set) should have the string “Regular” stored in this position. |
3 | Unique font identifier |
4 | Full font name; this should be a
combination of strings 1 and 2. Exception: if the font is “Regular”
as indicated in string 2, then use only the family name contained in
string 1. An exception to the above definition of Full font name is for Microsoft platform strings for CFF OpenType fonts: in this case, the Full font name string must be identical to the PostScript FontName in the CFF Name INDEX. |
5 | Version string. Should begin with the syntax
‘Version <number>.<number>’ (upper case, lower case, or mixed, with a space between “Version” and the number). The string must contain a version number of the following form: one or more digits (0-9) of value less than 65,535, followed by a period, followed by one or more digits of value less than 65,535. Any character other than a digit will terminate the minor number. A character such as “;” is helpful to separate different pieces of version information. The first such match in the string can be used by installation software to compare font versions. Note that some installers may require the string to start with “Version ”, followed by a version number as above. |
6 | Postscript name for the font; Name ID 6 specifies a string which is used to invoke a PostScript language font that corresponds to this OpenType font. If no name ID 6 is present, then there is no defined method for invoking this font on a PostScript interpreter. OpenType fonts which include a name with name ID of 6 shall include these two names with name ID 6, and characteristics as follows:
Names with name ID 6 other than the above two, if present, must be ignored.
|
7 | Trademark; this is used to save any trademark notice/information for this font. Such information should be based on legal advice. This is distinctly separate from the copyright. |
8 | Manufacturer Name. |
9 | Designer; name of the designer of the typeface. |
10 | Description; description of the typeface. Can contain revision information, usage recommendations, history, features, etc. |
11 | URL Vendor; URL of font vendor (with protocol, e.g., http://, ftp://). If a unique serial number is embedded in the URL, it can be used to register the font. |
12 | URL Designer; URL of typeface designer (with protocol, e.g., http://, ftp://). |
13 | License Description; description of how the font may be legally used, or different example scenarios for licensed use. This field should be written in plain language, not legalese. |
14 | License Info URL; URL where additional licensing information can be found. |
15 | Reserved; Set to zero. |
16 | Preferred Family; For historical reasons, font families have contained a maximum of four styles, but font designers may group more than four fonts to a single family. The Preferred Family allows font designers to include the preferred family grouping which contains more than four fonts. This ID is only present if it is different from ID 1. |
17 | Preferred Subfamily; Allows font designers to include the preferred subfamily grouping that is more descriptive than ID 2. This ID is only present if it is different from ID 2 and must be unique for the the Preferred Family. |
18 | Compatible Full (Macintosh only); On the Macintosh, the menu name is constructed using the FOND resource. This usually matches the Full Name. If you want the name of the font to appear differently than the Full Name, you can insert the Compatible Full Name in ID 18. |
19 | Sample text; This can be the font name, or any other text that the designer thinks is the best sample to display the font in. |
20 | PostScript CID findfont name; Its presence in a font means that the nameID 6 holds a PostScript font name that is meant to be used with the “composefont” invocation in order to invoke the font in a PostScript interpreter. See the definition of name ID 6.
The value held in the name ID 20 string is interpreted as a PostScript font name that is meant to be used with the “findfont” invocation, in order to invoke the font in a PostScript interpreter. If the name ID 20 is present in a font, there must be one name ID 20 record for every Macintosh platform cmap subtable in that font. A particular name ID 20 record is associated with the encoding specified by the matching cmap subtable. A name ID 20 record is matched to a cmap subtable when they have the same platform and platform-specific encoding IDs, and corresponding language/version IDs. Name ID 20 records are meant to be used only with Macintosh cmap subtables. The version field for a cmap subtable is one more than the language ID value for the corresponding name ID 20 record, with the exception of the cmap subtable version field 0. This version field, meaning “not language-specific”, corresponds to the language ID value 0xFFFF, or decimal 65535, for the corresponding name ID 20 record. When translated to ASCII, this name string must be restricted to the printable ASCII subset, codes 33 through 126, except for the 10 characters: '[', ']', '(', ')', '{', '}', '<', '>', '/', '%'. Note that this specification applies only to data fork OpenType fonts. Macintosh resource-fork TrueType and other Macintosh sfnt-wrapped fonts supply the PostScript font name to be used with the “findfont” invocation, in order to invoke the font in a PostScript interpreter, in the FOND resource style-mapping table. Note that a particular Name ID 20 string always corresponds to a particular Macintosh cmap subtable. However, some host OpenType/TTF fonts also contain a post table, format 4, which provides a mapping from glyph ID to encoding value, and also corresponds to a particular Macintosh cmap subtable. Unfortunately, the post table format 4 contains no provision for identifying which Macintosh cmap subtable it matches, nor for providing more than one mapping. Host fonts which contain a post table format 4, should also contain only a single Macintosh cmap subtable, and a single Name ID 20 string. In the case where there is more than one Macintosh cmap subtable and more than one Name ID 20 string, there is no definition of which one matches the post table format 4. |
Note that while both Apple and Microsoft support the same set of name strings, the interpretations may be somewhat different. But since name strings are stored by platform, encoding and language (placing separate strings for both Apple and MS platforms), this should not present a problem.
The key information for this table for MS fonts relates to the use of strings 1, 2 and 4. To better help understand, some examples of name usage, weight class and style flags have been created.
Note that OS/2 and Windows both require that all name strings be defined in Unicode. Thus all 'name' table strings for platform ID = 3 (Microsoft) will require two bytes per character. Macintosh fonts require single byte strings.
Examples of how these strings might be defined:
The copyright string from the font vendor. © Copyright the Monotype Corporation plc, 1990
The name the user sees. Times New Roman
The name of the style. Bold
A unique identifier that applications can store to identify the font being used. Monotype: Times New Roman Bold:1990
The complete, hopefully unique, human readable name of the font. This name is used by Windows. Times New Roman Bold
(If this were the Microsoft platform string for a CFF OpenType font, then the value would be TimesNewRoman-Bold, as described in the definition of name ID 4 above.)Release and version information from the font vendor. Version 1.00 June 1, 1990, initial release
The name the font will be known by on a PostScript printer. TimesNewRoman-Bold
Trademark string. Times New Roman is a registered trademark of the Monotype Corporation.
Manufacturer. Monotype Corporation plc
Designer. Stanley Morison
Description. Designed in 1932 for the Times of London newspaper. Excellent readability and a narrow overall width, allowing more words per line than most fonts.
URL of Vendor. http://www.monotype.com
URL of Designer. http://www.monotype.com
License Description. This font may be installed on all of your machines and printers, but you may not sell or give these fonts to anyone else.
License Info URL.
<http://www.monotype.com/license/>
Reserved. Set to zero.
Preferred Family. No name string present, since it is the same as name ID 1 (Font Family name).
Preferred Subfamily. No name string present, since it is the same as name ID 2 (Font Subfamily name).
Compatible Full (Macintosh only). No name string present, since it is the same as name ID 4 (Full name).
Sample text. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
PostScript CID findfont name. No name string present. Thus, the PostScript Name defined by name ID 6 should be used with the “findfont” invocation for locating the font in the context of a PostScript interpreter.
The following is an example of only name IDs 6 and 20 in the CFF OpenType Japanese font Kozuka Mincho Std Regular (other name IDs are also present in this font):
-
6. PostScript name: KozMinStd-Regular. Since a name ID 20 is present in the font (see below), then the PostScript name defined by name ID 6 should be used with the “composefont” invocation for locating the font in the context of a PostScript interpreter.
20. PostScript CID findfont name: KozMinStd-Regular-83pv-RKSJ-H, in a name record of Platform 1 [Macintosh], Platform-specific script 1 [Japanese], Language: 0xFFFF [English]. This name string is a PostScript name that should be used with the “findfont” invocation for locating the font in the context of a PostScript interpreter, and is associated with the encoding specified by the following cmap subtable, which must be present in the font: Platform: 1 [Macintosh]; Platform-specific encoding: 1 [Japanese]; Language: 0 [not language-specific].