How to put in a variable the text from all elements of an specified type

I want to put in a variable "x" all the content of the "name" elements. 
The following code didn't do the trick
<xsl:variable name="x" select="//name" />

It just selected the first ocurrence of name. What I want to do is, 
whenever a registered name is typed in the middle of a sentence, it will 
be marked as bold (at first, later I will add hyperlinks). So, every 
word typed will be matched against that list.
Thanks.