identifier

identify +‎ -er

identifier (plural identifiers)

1. Someone who identifies; a person who establishes the identity of.
   • 2001, Theodore A. Landers, The Career Guide to the Horse Industry‎:

     The Identifier personally inspects each horse in each race by verifying the lip tattoo, body color, head and leg markings, scars, and chestnut (night eyes).

   • 2004, John McEvoy, Great Horse Racing Mysteries: True Tales from the Track‎:

     The foal papers are documents recording the horse's registration; no horse can start in any race unless his papers are in the hands of the track's identifier.

2. Something that identifies or uniquely points to something or someone else.
   • 2008, Ted Dunstone, Neil Yager, Biometric System and Data Analysis:

     Prehistoric artists used hand-prints in cave paintings, perhaps as a 'signature'. They might be considered the earliest example of a biometric identifier.

3. A guidebook that helps determine the specific class of an object (such as a mushroom, herb, fish, bird, drug, or mineral), or its individual identity (such as that of a star).
4. (programming, operating systems) A formal name used in source code to refer to a variable, function, procedure, package, etc. or in an operating system to refer to a process, user, group, etc.
5. (HTML) A code that distinguishes a particular element from all other elements in a document.
6. (databases) A primary key.

• id
• ID

• identifier on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

From Vulgar Latin *identificare.

• IPA^(key): /i.dɑ̃.ti.fje/

• audio

  (file)

identifier

1. to identify
2. to log in

• “identifier” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).