Common Name in Active Directory

The Common Name or CN is a property of LDAP objects to describe their well-known, common names. Active Directory inherits this property in its schemas and relies on it for naming many different types of objects. It is the most used Relative Distinguished Name (RDN) in an AD forest. In AD nomenclature, and tools like Active Directory Users and Computers, it is often called the “Full Name”.

Example in ADUC:

If this User object were inside the Users Organizational Unit (OU), the DN for it would be CN=StudentWorker\, COS,OU=Users,DC=domain. The CN is the RDN used to identify the object under the Users OU.