The big diamonds are specifically the Chen notation of ER diagrams. Which is popular in academia because that's how Professor Chen first described ER models, bu

The big diamonds are specifically the Chen notation of ER diagrams. Which is popular in academia because that's how Professor Chen first described ER models, but seems pretty unpopular everywhere else because it's not that readable, especially as models get larger. Most people who have to actually use ER diagrams seem to use some variation of the UML notation. And even though it doesn't seem to have a name, OPs version is a pretty straightforward (and imho more intuitive) extension of the UML notation (forbidding N-N relationships and adding the relationship name as a foreign key to the table instead of writing it on the arrow). It's also hardly the first time I've seen it, we just need someone to publish a book that gives it a catchy name. If we want people to actually use ER diagrams, treating the original version from 50 years ago as the only valid way to write them doesn't seem useful. Both science and engineering are about iterative improvement after all.