diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index 52fae9b0..98399dc4 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -1,5 +1,7 @@
 # roxygen2 (development version)
 
+* For person defintions `DESCRIPTION`, the comment argument can now contain an arbitrary number of elements, and the names of these elements are included in the resulting string representation (@jranke, #1746)
+
 # roxygen2 7.3.3
 
 * Package documentation now converts ROR IDs into a useful link (#1698, @maelle).
diff --git a/R/object-package.R b/R/object-package.R
index 3e8247e1..2b6d0ff1 100644
--- a/R/object-package.R
+++ b/R/object-package.R
@@ -78,7 +78,13 @@ author_desc <- function(x) {
     }
 
     if (length(x$comment) > 0) {
-      desc <- paste0(desc, " (", x$comment, ")")
+      desc <- paste0(desc, " (",
+        paste(
+          ifelse(nzchar(names(x$comment)),
+            paste0(names(x$comment), ": ", x$comment),
+            x$comment),
+            collapse = ", "),
+      ")")
     }
   }
 
diff --git a/tests/testthat/test-object-package.R b/tests/testthat/test-object-package.R
index c2562a5c..a2192ad0 100644
--- a/tests/testthat/test-object-package.R
+++ b/tests/testthat/test-object-package.R
@@ -102,3 +102,11 @@ test_that("multiple email addresses for a person are acceptable #1487", {
     "me \\email{one@email.me, two@email.me}"
   )
 })
+
+test_that("Arbitrary comments for a person are acceptable #1746", {
+  me <- person("me", comment = c(acronym = "m", "contributed X"))
+  expect_equal(
+    author_desc(unclass(me)[[1]]),
+    "me (acronym: m, contributed X)"
+  )
+})