What is an operation name in GraphQL?

An operation name is an optional but recommended identifier for a GraphQL operation. Example: query FetchUserProfile { user(id: "1") { name } }. While anonymous operations ({ user { name } }) work, named operations are important for production systems. They appear in server logs and analytics, making it easy to trace slow queries or errors. They are required when sending multiple operations in a single document (the client specifies which to execute). Apollo Studio, Datadog APM, and other monitoring tools use operation names to surface performance breakdowns.