Named Entity Concept

A Named Entity, or simply Entity, classifies atomic elements in text into predefined categories such as the names of persons, organizations, locations, expressions of times, quantities, monetary values, percentages, etc. Such entities are generally individuals or instances with a recognizable name designator.

In most cases, named entities are capitalized such as Abraham Lincoln or Fido, but there are also named "things" in such areas as minerals (garnet, ruby, diamond), plants (daisy, buttercup, redwood) or animals (beetles, cougars, cows) that can be classified as a "named entity".

Named entity recognition is a distinct kind of information extraction that identifies such named things in text.