The adjective nominal (ultimately from Latin nōmen, "name") generally relates to the concept of names, and often to the difference between what something is in name (ideally or theoretically) and what it is in reality. Thus it may refer to:
- In computer science, nominal techniques are a series of approaches for working with, and simplifying the reasoning about, formal languages with name binding constructs. The approaches are based on Fraenkel-Mostowski set theory. Permutations of names, freshness conditions, and atoms, used for representing names, are central components in nominal approaches. Nominal Isabelle is a package for the Isabelle proof assistant that simplifies proving properties about languages with binders using nominal techniques.
- In law, nominal damages may be assessed by a jury or judge in a lawsuit when it is found that the defendant committed the act complained of by the plaintiff, but that no harm was suffered by the plaintiff as a result.
- In linguistics, a nominal is a word or group of words functioning as a noun. The word is also sometimes used as a shortened form of "nominal phrase", a synonym for "noun phrase". "Nominal" can also mean a sequence of one or more nouns that do not form a complete noun phrase. In other uses, it refers to a class of word that encapsulates both parts of speech in English as nouns and adjectives.
- In statistics, nominal data is a form of categorical data where the order of the categories is not significant. This is sometimes contracted to nominals.
- In politics, nominal independence in contrast to full independence of a country.
