The Java® Virtual Machine Specification, Java SE 7 Edition, Third Edition

4.2. The Internal Form of Names

4.2.1. Binary Class and Interface Names

Class and interface names that appear in class file structures are always represented in a fully qualified form known as binary names (JLS §13.1). Such names are always represented as CONSTANT_Utf8_info (§4.4.7) structures and thus may be drawn, where not further constrained, from the entire Unicode codespace. Class and interface names are referenced from those CONSTANT_NameAndType_info (§4.4.6) structures which have such names as part of their descriptor (§4.3), and from all CONSTANT_Class_info (§4.4.1) structures.

For historical reasons, the syntax of binary names that appear in class file structures differs from the syntax of binary names documented in JLS §13.1. In this ...