The CORBA COS (Common Object Services) Naming Service provides a tree-like directory for object references much like a filesystem provides a directory structure for files. The Transient Naming Service provided with Java IDL, tnameserv, is a simple implementation of the COS Naming Service specification. Object references are stored in the namespace by name and each object reference-name pair is called a name binding. Name bindings may be organized under naming contexts. Naming contexts are themselves name bindings and serve the same organizational function as a file system subdirectory. All bindings are stored under the initial naming context. The initial naming context is the only persistent binding in the namespace; the rest of the namespace is lost if the transient naming service process halts and restarts.