diff --git a/src/core/opamStd.mli b/src/core/opamStd.mli
index 4864d618397..5354ae10695 100644
--- a/src/core/opamStd.mli
+++ b/src/core/opamStd.mli
@@ -413,7 +413,29 @@ module Env : sig
 
   (** {3 Environment variable handling} *)
 
-  (** Environment variable names *)
+  (** Environment variable names. Windows has complicated semantics for
+      environment variables. The retrieval functions are case insensitive, but
+      it's "legal" for the environment block to contain entries which differ
+      only by case. If environment variables are set entirely using CRT or Win32
+      API functions, then there isn't usually a problem, the issue arises when
+      creating a program where the environment block is instead passed. In this
+      model, it's very easy to end up with two bindings in the same block. When
+      dealing with Windows programs, this will mostly be transparent, but it's a
+      problem with Cygwin which actively allows "duplicate" entries which differ
+      by case only and implements Posix semantics on top of this. The problem is
+      constantly with us thanks to the use of PATH on Unix, and Path on Windows!
+      opam tries to ensure that environment variables are looked up according to
+      the OS semantics (so case insensitively on Windows) and OpamEnv goes to
+      some trouble to ensure that updates to environment variables are case
+      preserving (i.e. PATH+=foo gets transformed to Path+=foo if Path exists
+      in the environment block).
+
+      Key to this is not accidentally treating environment variable names as
+      strings, without using the appropriate comparison functions. Name.t
+      represents environment variable names as private strings, providing
+      comparison operators to handle them, and still allowing the possibility
+      to coerce them to strings.
+      *)
   module Name : sig
     include ABSTRACT with type t = private string