If you mean, uses the same Category Title, yes it stays the same. However, I just tested this and it doesn’t allow you to keep the same slug.
For example, let’s say these are my categories:
– Witnesses
– – John Smith
– People
– – John Smith
The names look the same, however, I noticed, it doesn’t allow both John Smith’s to have the same slug. For example, if the slug for John Smith under witnesses is “johnsmith”, the slug for the John Smith under People will be named something like “johnsmith-people”.
Alternatively, it sounds like Custom Post Types and Custom Taxonomies might best suit what you’re trying to do (E.g, have a “Witnesses” and another post type (maybe “Criminals”) and allow them to make use of a taxonomy called “People”?).
I’m thinking of using WordPress to put up the transcript of a historical trial. John Smith under Witnesses would refer only to his appearances as a witness, whereas under People it would refer to any where he is mentioned. I distinctly remember reading on Blogspot that categories had to be unique no matter where they were in the hierarchy, clicking on John Smith would return all posts in the category, both Witnesses and People. It seemed nonsensical to me: no Pies -> Cherry, Fruit -> Cherry, but it said the hierarchy was only for organization.
WordPress has tags and categories. Tags are ‘flat’ and categories are ‘hierachical’.
The slugs (i.e. the behind the scenes names) must be unique, but you can still reuse them. They just get new slugs, so Pies -> Cherry would be ‘cherry’ and Fruit -> Cherry would be (cherry-1) and so on.
So if a user clicked om cherry pies, she wouldn’t get cherries, but just cherry pies?
That’s right in terms of categories. Clicking Pies -> Cherry will give just Cherry Pies and not Fruit -> Cherry.
