Tag icon at upper right of imported photos

The tag icon at the upper right of a photo thumbnail indicates that one or more keywords have been assigned to the photo. Clicking on the tag displays the keyword(s).

When you exported and deleted the photos, you lost the connection to the face identification database. When you re-imported the photos, Photos had to start over finding the faces and then matching them to the People database.

I cannot at the moment explain how your photos wound up with keywords that happen to match face names. Some users recommend setting keywords that way to guard against loss of information should the face id database be lost or corrupted, bu I don't think Photos will do that for you unbidden.

Mark already explained, what has been happening.

Just a add-on about how keywords are handled on export.

The tag looking like a baggage label will show you the keywords, if a photo has keywords assigned.

When you export the edited version of a photo with a named face assigned, the name of the person will be saved as a keyword in the IPTC tags of the exported file, if you enable the Export option "Include: Title, keypads, and description". When you reimport the photo to Photos, the keywords will be automatically assigned. if you export photos with keywords, be sure that there are no typos in the keywords, or the typos will forever be burned in, because they are embedded in the image files.

The faces names will also be saved as keywords, if you export originals with an XMP sidecar file.

léonie wrote:

When you export the edited version of a photo with a named face assigned, the name of the person will be saved as a keyword in the IPTC tags of the exported file, if you enable the Export option "Include: Title, keypads, and description". When you reimport the photo to Photos, the keywords will be automatically assigned. if you export photos with keywords, be sure that there are no typos in the keywords, or the typos will forever be burned in, because they are embedded in the image files.

The faces names will also be saved as keywords, if you export originals with an XMP sidecar file.

Thanks for the reminder, léonie. I don’t export and reimport frequently enough to remember that exports assigns face names as keywords (if keyword export is enabled).