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https://www.grammarly.com/blog/appositive/

When an appositive noun or noun phrase contains an essential element without which a sentence’s meaning would materially alter, do not frame it with commas.

My friend, Jenny, owes me fifty dollars. (wrong)

My friend Jenny owes me fifty dollars.

When the identifier makes sense in the sentence by itself, then the name is nonessential and you use a comma before it.

So what about these examples? Friend could be anybody so it makes sense to use the commas, but a husband and a partner identifies the subject, so I'd assume commas should be used around the names? We can assume they are only married to one person...so it is nonessential information.

1.Singer Ellie Goulding and her husband Caspar Jopling were seen leaving the Roundhouse in Camden, London,

2.He was dragged away by powerful currents during the evening swim at around 6pm, while his partner Jenny stayed in the hotel room.

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  • By conventional standards of style, the sentence with the commas is correct only if you only have one friend; otherwise, the name is restrictive and there should be no commas. In the second sentence, Ellie presumably only has a single husband, so there should be commas. The third sentence is a different type of construction altogether.
    – Jason Bassford
    Commented Nov 24, 2019 at 6:21
  • Would you include commas around the name in the third sentence?
    – bluebell1
    Commented Nov 24, 2019 at 18:11
  • In that specific part of the third sentence, commas would normally be omitted if he had more than one partner or knew more than one Jenny. (But we can't tell from the sentence itself if either is the case.)
    – Jason Bassford
    Commented Nov 24, 2019 at 21:55

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