A method and system for referring to and binding to objects using a moniker object is provided. In preferred embodiments a moniker object contains information to identify linked source data and provides methods through which a program can bind to the linked source data. A binding method is provided that returns an instance of an interface through which the linked source data can be accessed. In a preferred embodiment, the moniker object provides other methods including a reducing method that returns a more efficient representation of the moniker object; equality and hash methods for comparing moniker objects; and inverse, common prefix, and relative-path-to methods for comparing and locating moniker objects from other moniker objects. Several implementations of a moniker object are provided. Each implementation is a moniker class and has a class identifier that identifies code to manage the moniker class.