remote branches, and branch names in general

I see the remote branches with names of the form remotes/pub/name where
pub is the nickname of the place I pull from.  To specify such branches,
must I always spell it out with the leading "remotes/", or can that be
shorted or implied somehow?  

Meanwhile, I see that branch names can be hierarchical, as I found out
when I accidently created a branch called "pub/xxx".  So I'm wondering
about the usefulness of using that for organizing topic branches based
on assigned tasks organization and the person owning that branch.

--John


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