# Object Names and Identities

An object in Active Directory Domain Services has several identities, including the following :

* Relative Distinguished name : An RDN is the relative portion of a distinguished name (DN), which uniquely identifies an LDAP object.\

* Distinguished name: Every Active Directory (AD) object has a distinguished name (DN—e.g., CN=John Savill,CN=Users,DC=SavillTech,DC=Com) that uniquely identifies the object and its position in AD. The system also creates a relative distinguished name (RDN), which is a name relative to the container (e.g., CN=John Savill for the user).\

* Object GUID: globally unique identifier assigned by AD DS when the  object instance is created (128 bit number guaranteed to be unique in space and time)

More info can be found here :

{% embed url="https://docs.microsoft.com/fr-fr/windows/win32/ad/object-names-and-identities" %}

{% embed url="https://www.itprotoday.com/compute-engines/what-happens-if-two-ad-objects-have-same-rdn" %}

