When working in Salesforce, especially as a developer or admin, you’ve likely encountered various suffixes like __c, __r, or __mdt in your objects and fields. These aren’t random – they each serve a purpose and provide critical insight into the nature of the data you’re working with.
In this blog post, let’s dive deep into what these salesforce suffixes mean and how they help in understanding and navigating Salesforce architecture more efficiently.
Why Do Salesforce Suffixes Matter?
Suffixes in Salesforce help identify:
- Whether an object is custom or standard
- If the object represents a relationship, metadata, or event
- Whether it was generated from a geolocation, external system, or data change event
Understanding these suffixes enables you to write cleaner SOQL, debug integrations effectively, and build scalable solutions.
Common Salesforce Suffixes & Their Meanings
| Suffix / Extension | Description |
|---|---|
| __c | Custom object |
| __r | Relationship field (used in SOQL to traverse to related records) |
| __x | External object (used in Salesforce Connect to link to outside systems) |
| __mdt | Custom Metadata Type (used for storing app configurations) |
| __e | Platform Event (used for event-driven architecture) |
| __changeEvent | Change Data Capture event (for tracking data changes in real-time) |
| __b | Big Object (for handling massive volumes of data without hitting limits) |
| __History | Field History Tracking for Custom Objects |
| __share | Sharing object (controls sharing access manually or via sharing rules) |
| __feed | Chatter feed object (e.g., AccountFeed, CaseFeed for collaboration) |
| __tag | Tag object (deprecated but used in older tagging implementations) |
| __ka | KnowledgeArticle |
| __kav | KnowledgeArticleVersion |
| __Feed | Custom Object Feed |
| __xo | Salesforce-to-Salesforce (S2S) spoke/proxy object |
| __pc | Custom Person Account Field |
| __pr | Used for traversing custom Person Account relationship fields |
| __latitude__s | Stores the latitude value of a location |
| __Longitude__s | Stores the longitude value of a location |
| __Location__s | Compound field that stores both latitude and longitude |
Understanding these suffixes is essential for anyone working in Salesforce – whether you’re building LWC components, writing Apex triggers, integrating with external APIs, or analyzing security models.
