Right now parentless cr_folders cannot have the same name because all parentless cr_items have 0 as the parent_id, and name, parent_id is defined unique.
It was suggested to use another object, such as a site-node as the parent_id. This is a partial solution. To easily find root folders for a hierarchy, I am suggesting a subtype of content folder called root_content_folder be created. Code that checks for parent_id=0 can check for content_type of root_content_folder (or a subtype of that).
THis is necessary because the cotent repository can support multiple folder hierarchies.
I am open to any alternative suggestions. Right now content_folders are content_items that do not use cr_items.name for the URL fragment. Content folders such as file-storage are created as file-storage-root_12345 where 12345 is the item_id.