This note looks at names for   and   in the XML 1.0, HTML 4.01 and HTML5 specifications:
HTML4 defines character reference to mean   or  
XML defines a character reference to mean only   or   It also refers to these as numeric character references when contrasting with general entity references used for characters
HTML4 calls   or   numeric character references
XML refers to as an entity reference
HTML4 refers to it as a character entity reference
The sequence of words ‘character entity reference’ does not occur in the XML spec.
HTML5 used to call   and   character entity references
It divided character entity references into named entities, decimal numeric entities and hexadecimal numeric entities.
Now HTML5 calls a named character reference, and   and   are respectively hexadecimal numeric character reference and decimal numeric character reference.