Designation
The formal act of placing a person or entity on a sanctions list, with a date and a legal basis.
Updated 2026-07-26
A designation is a decision by an authority under a specific legal instrument. The entry usually records when it was made and under which programme, and those two facts are what give the entry its legal meaning.
A designation applies to the person or entity identified by the authority, not to everyone with a similar name. The identifying details in an entry — date of birth, passport number, registration number, address — exist precisely because names are not sufficient.
Designations can be amended without being removed. An entry that changed today may have been designated years ago; the entry date and the amendment date are different things.
Related terms
5 entries- Delisting
- The removal of an entry from a sanctions list, visible only by comparing two published versions.
- SDN list
- The list of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons published by the U.S. Treasury.
- Sanctions list
- An official register of persons and entities subject to restrictive measures, published by a government or an international body.
- Sanctions programme
- The named regime under which a designation is made, such as a country or activity-based programme.
- Weak alias
- A name variant an authority publishes with a warning that it is too common or too partial to identify anyone on its own.