What do you call tables that create many to many relationships?

We a开发者_开发问答re having a debate here at the shed about what we call the table that contains the two foreign keys of entities that you use to create a many to many relationship. Here are the names we have, which do you use?

1. Linking Table
2. Cross Table
3. Relation Table

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4. Cross Reference.  

Describes what it actually does, is therefore intelligible to non-technical stakeholders, as in "We'll create a cross-reference for vendors and parts, listing which vendors supply which parts."

Note that "Relation table" if you use it would actually be "relationship table". The term "relation" is a term of art in relational database theory.

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None of the above. What exactly is the definition of the type of table you are trying to describe? My only understanding is this: you mean a table with more than one foreign key. I don't know of any better definition than that. But why would you want a special name for a table with more than one foreign key? Tables with more than one foreign key aren't very unusual or special. I would just call them tables and leave it at that.

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Wikipedia, calls it is an "associative table", "(also known as join table, junction table, or cross-reference table)".

It seems that calling it a "many-to-many table" might be clear to developers, while I appreciate @Ken Downs's example sentence to describe it "intelligibly to non-technical stakeholders" ("cross-reference for vendors and parts").

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Of the three: Cross-table. Just because I've heard that more often.

I'd prefer "Relation Table" before "Linking Table" - it links the items via their relationship.

Probably the best name would be "Join Table" -- since you're using it to join two other tables together, with extra details (optional).

I've also heard "Edge Table" -- any idea where that comes from?

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There's only one correct answer... cross table

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1. Junction Table.
2. Relationship Table (as opposed to Entity Table)