I honestly did not think about foreign key column names when I was typing, so thanks for pointing it out.

I'm always a fan of making foreign key column names more descriptive than just the table name. Widgets may have a user_id but it probably makes more sense to have an owner_id.

Large queries, many tables, many FKs will make it easier to see why these conventions exist. Patterns like "users JOIN things USING (user_id) JOIN stuff USING (user_id, thing_id) ...".

orders.users_fk?

Then you know exactly what that column is there for. It was intended to be a foreign key for the users table.

I think "orders.user_id" is fine too of course, I'm not going to argue against that. But isn't it just the tiniest bit more ambiguous?

Edit: There's probably also always better names than just the table name with id, too.

For example orders might have more than one fk to the users table, depending on the type of site. Something like ebay might have both buyer_id and seller_id on a single order.