What is the purpose of BACKUP WITH NAME? I looked at the Microsoft documentation (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms186865.aspx) and see that there is a WITH NAME option for backups.  But it's not the name of the file (I specify that with TO DISK).  And if I don't specify it, the name is left blank.

So what is the purpose of specifying WITH NAME?  What benefits do I get?
This merely allows you to look up a backup by name, using:

SELECT * FROM msdb.dbo.backupset WHERE [name] = N'the_name_you_used';


This can be useful as a kind of tagging mechanism, e.g. if you specify backups for different things (such as restoring to dev vs. initiating log shipping vs. shipping off-site). Much easier than relying solely on the file name (which can be changed in Windows after the backup is complete), or the file number when you've appended multiple backups to the same file.