 | This guideline documents an English Wikipedia naming convention. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page. |
This page covers the naming convention of businesses, corporations, companies, public limited companies, limited companies, limited liability partnerships, limited liability companies, proprietary limited companies, unlimited liability corporations, and other types of corporations.
Article title
Convention: The legal status suffix of a company (such as Inc., plc, LLC, and those in other languages such as GmbH, AG, and S.A.) is not normally included in the article title (for example, Microsoft Corporation, Nestlé S.A., Aflac Incorporated, and Deutsche Post AG). When disambiguation is needed, the legal status, an appended "(company)", or other suffix can be used to disambiguate (for example, Oracle Corporation, Apple Inc., and Kashi (company)).
Whenever possible, common usage is preferred (such as The Hartford for The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc. and DuPont for the E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company).
If the legal status is used to disambiguate, it should be included in the article title using the company's own preference for either the abbreviated or unabbreviated form (such as Caterpillar Inc.). Likewise, whether or not to include a comma prior to the legal status should be governed by company usage (compare, for example, Nike, Inc. and Apple Inc.).
In some cases, leading articles (usually The) and suffixes (such as Company, International, Group, and so forth) are an integral part of the company name and should be included as specified by the company, especially when necessary for disambiguation (for example, The Walt Disney Company and The Coca-Cola Company). In other instances, such as with JPMorgan Chase & Co., the common usage of JPMorgan Chase is preferred. In some limited cases, Corporation may also be a key part of the company's name in common usage, rather than simply as a designator of its official legal status, such as with Power Corporation, Digital Equipment Corporation, and News Corporation.
Legal status may be included, even when disambiguation is not needed, for companies that are commonly known by acronyms such as British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC). Do not abbreviate the legal status in these cases, unless the abbreviated form is preferred by the company in question.
In cases where an ampersand is an integral part of the company name, such as in AT&T, do not replace "&" with "and" in the article title or in general use, per MOS:&.
First sentence
Regardless of the article title, the first sentence of the article should normally begin with the full legal name of the company:
- Generic Publishing Corporation Ltd. is one of the largest publishers of widget books worldwide and is based in Anytown, Bookland.