"The IEEE 802.11 set of technical standard is the formal name for the wireless technology commonly referred to as Wi-Fi.
The 802.11 standard comes in an alphabet soup of flavors, which are appended to the end (e.g. 802.11ax). 802.11 has become more commonly referred to as simply 'Wi-Fi' and then a generation number (such as 'Wi-Fi 5')."