cypher creating a node of type actor

Question

from the cypher documentation, it gives the following running code

CREATE (n:Actor { name:"Tom Hanks" });

My question is, what is "n". it doesn't seem to be used in any subsequent example code and is not explained.

the original documentation is here

Another point that is unclear to me is does "n:Actor" set the label of the node??

Anton Anton · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-04T05:37:24

i figured out what the "n" means.

n can be thought of assigning the result of the CREATE to a variable n. n can then be reused/referenced later on in the cypher.

a more meaningful name rather than n may have been "actor"

And the :Actor does set the label of the node to Actor