XML in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Name

local-name( )

Synopsis

                     string local-name( )
string local-name(node-set nodes)

With no arguments, this function returns the context node’s local name, that is, the part of the name after the colon, or the entire name if it isn’t prefixed. For a node-set argument, it returns the local name of the first node in the node-set. If the node-set is empty or the first node in the set does not have a name (e.g., it’s a comment or root node), then it returns the empty string.