The name which is selected (approved by the Directorate of Logistics Information Management, DLIS, as the Official designation for an item of supply), and delimited where necessary, to establish a basic concept of the item of supply to which the item belongs and with which it should be compared. It may be a basic name, or a basic name followed by those modifiers necessary to differentiate between item concepts having the same basic name.

Approved item names, basic names, and colloquial names are published in Cataloging Handbook H6. When two or more names are applicable to an item, the name which is most commonly used by the Government and industry shall be selected as the item name. The other name(s) shall be cross-indexed to the selected name.

Reference

DoD 4100.39-M Glossary