aliasing elements

Is there any way to alias an element or attribute from another namespace?

This immediate spur of this question is that the XHTML 2.0 draft is
struggling with xml:id

http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/mod-core.html#col_Core

At the moment, it defines both id and xml:id, but says not to use them
on the same element.  I believe what they really want is to say is
closer to:

xml:id is a core attribute.  id is just an alias for xml:id.  It is
not merely similar, or a second copy; it is the same attribute, so
only one of the two names can be used on any given element.

I believe that xml:lang and xml:base are similar, and there is a
chance that aliasing could help resolve some of the problems with
xlink.

-jJ