Different states may have the same name, provided that the states with the same name are not top-level states or children of the same composite state. For example, changing the name of state C in the previous example to F does not cause a conflict. However, changing its name to D makes it conflict with another state D, since both of them are children of composite state B.
The path name or full path of a state is a unique string that identifies a state in a model (the GUID required in the mathematical syntax). It contains the state names from the top-level superstate down to the state that is identified. The name of each state within this path is a name component. Different name components are separated with a dot. For example, the following path names uniquely identify all the states in Figure 4.1: A, B, B.C, B.D, B.E, B.D.F, B.E.G, B.E.H, B.E.I, B.E.I.J and B.E.I.K.