How to name a dictionary?

Question

Are there any conventions / guidelines for naming associative arrays (e.g. Dictionary<TKey, TValue>) in .NET?

For example, is there a better way to name dict in:

var dict = new Dictionary<Foo, Bar>();

Some names I've used / seen:

foosToBars
mapFromFooToBar
barsByFoo
barsForFoos

I've also seen some types in the BCL choosing 'nicer' sounding names that don't directly reveal what the key and value are supposed to represent, such as in this method.

How about for multimaps (e.g. ILookup<TKey, TElement>)?

EDIT:

Perhaps my example was slightly poor; I didn't mean to focus on the types of the key and value.

How about if it was:

// key = Name of person, value = Age of person
var dict = new Dictionary<string, int>();

With the samples updated to:

namesToAges
mapFromNameToAge
agesByName
agesForNames

Answer 1

I'd try to follow the example you linked to, where you don't name the dictionary after what it contains but you name it for what it's for. It doesn't take long for someone to determine that "dict" is a dictionary that maps Foo keys to Bar values, but what i'd want to know is why you're doing that.