What's so special in "near field" and is it used in Near Field Communication?
The "near field" in NFC simply refers to the close proximity of the communicating devices. It's just a commercial name.  

When talking about transmission systems there's the "near field" opposite the "far field". The near field extends to about 1 wavelength away from the antenna, the far field starts from about 2 wavelengths away. The difference is that in the near field the transmitter can sense when radiated energy is being absorbed, while in the far field this isn't possible. This near field effect is used in RFID, where the tag "sends" a code to the reader by pulse-wise loading the carrier. In the far field this won't work.