Rdf Primer / quote 41 of 55
Xml qualified name (or qname)
For convenience, the Primer uses a shorthand way of writing triples (the same shorthand is also used in other RDF specifications). This shorthand substitutes an XML qualified name (or QName) without angle brackets as an abbreviation for a full URI reference (QNames are discussed further in Appendix B). A QName contains a prefix that has been assigned to a namespace URI, followed by a colon, and then a local name. The full URIref is formed from the QName by appending the local name to the namespace URI assigned to the prefix. So, for example, if the QName prefix foo is assigned to the namespace URI http://example.org/somewhere/, then the QName foo:bar is shorthand for the URIref http://example.org/somewhere/bar.