name="" deprecated in XHTML

Hi,

i used to use name="" to group equal elements, or in other words, same 
element placed more than once on a page

e.g. a footnote <sup name="footnote_1">1</sup>

(and than i used the name to attach a mouse hover event to it which 
displayed the content from the bottom in a bubble hint)

but this is now deprecated

does this makes sense?

-- 
Sebastian Mendel