I'm a little confused... there shouldn't be a comma here. If anything, there should be a semicolon --> "...called Sam; it sat on the mat" because there are two phrases that could stand independently as sentences. This doesn't happen if there's just a comma there, unless there's a conjunction along with it (and, but, or, nor, etc.).
So I guess the technical term is a semicolon? Though that doesn't seem so technical...
Correct usage of a comma: The cat, called Sam, sat on a mat.
Or: The cat, who sat on a mat, was called Sam.
Or: Sam, a cat, sat on a mat.
Or: The cat, who was called by the marjority of unsaid persons as Sam, sat on the mat.
Or: Upon the mat sat a cat... No, forget that last one.
This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much all of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. — Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
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