[snip]
From Merriam Webster Dictionary:
Main Entry: 1ar·chive Pronunciation: 'är-"kIv Function: noun Etymology: French & Latin; French, from Latin archivum, from Greek archeion government house (in plural, official documents), from archE rule, government -- more at ARCH- : a place in which public records or historical documents are preserved; also : the material preserved -- often used in plural
and
Main Entry: 2archive Function: transitive verb Inflected Form(s): ar·chived; ar·chiv·ing : to file or collect (as records or documents) in or as if in an archive
These entries also seem to put archive pretty close to persistence. My point was that serialization is not only about persistence. Persistence is surely a big use case but not the only one.
IMO Archive is about as good a name as we'll get.
Even if one uses serialization in conjunction with e.g. network communication? "archive" doesn't sound right to me in this environment. IMHO, "serializer" would be much better because it does not make any suggestions where the data is going to end up. However, since I seem to be the only one with these concerns I won't push this any further. Regards, Andreas