Tom Wilson (3/23/2010)
The basic idea for this topic is useful to brand-new database designeres - build a new table when there is a many-to-many relationship between two other tables. But note that we don't need a new name ("bridge table") for this concept. There is a long established discipline of data modeling, and a table such as this already has names such as associative entity, using entity-relationship terminology. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associative_Entities
Not to quibble a minor point, but "bridge table" is not a new name for this concept. It's a commonly accepted term, widely used at least in Kimball-style data warehousing. As you point out, this idea already goes by many names, but bridge table is the one I'm used to. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_Table