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The Manual of hyperref states that hypertexnames: use guessable names for links.

What does this mean? What are the consequences of using this option?

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up vote 18 down vote accepted

With the option hypertexnames hyperref uses the corresponding counter in addition to the link type to construct the link name. Imagine, you have two chapters and one section in each chapter plus one table. The link names would be:

With hypertexnames:


Without hypertexnames:


Without hypertexnames it's just counting upwards, using the \Hy@linkcounter instead of the corresponding chapter resp. section counter. It's similar for other objects and links to them.

Thus, with hypertexnames you could guess the link name, if you would like to use it for referencing, from the corresponding counter value instead of a shared counter.

Looking for hypertexnames in hyperref.sty gives further information, for instance in the definition of the command \hyper@makecurrent. But you could also take a quick look into the .aux, .toc, .lot etc. files to notice the different kind of link names.

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The counting done with hypertexnames enabled (which is the default) can get you into troubles if you are e.g. resetting chapter counters for the various parts of your book. The counting done with hypertexnames=false isn't "guessable", but more robust. Check out this question... –  DevSolar Sep 27 '11 at 11:29
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