Naming conventions that age well

Names are cheap to set and expensive to change across many tables and downstream consumers. A little consistency up front keeps the catalog navigable.

Schemas & tables

• Lowercase, singular-or-consistent nouns. Pick order vs orders and stick to it across the catalog.
• Group by domain or pipeline stage in the schema: sales.orders, raw.events, curated.customers, reference.countries.
• No environment in the name - separate dev/prod with a different storage connection, not orders_prod.
• Avoid dates/versions in table names - versioning is built in (table history); don't bake orders_2026 into the name.

Columns

• snake_case, descriptive, source-aligned. Column names are case-sensitive - match the source system and be consistent.
• Suffix types of keys consistently: _id for identifiers, _at for timestamps, is_ for booleans (is_active).
• Spell out rather than abbreviate cryptically (category not cat).

Why it matters

Names flow into the FQN, the sidebar, SQL queries, and every downstream tool reading the Delta table. Renaming a column or table later means updating consumers - so the convention you choose now is the one you live with.

Next

• Create an empty table from a schema.