Wikipedia:Naming conventions (companies)
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This page documents an English Wikipedia naming convention. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should follow, though it should be treated with common sense and the occasional exception. When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects 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 and other types of corporations.
Convention: The legal status of the company (Inc., plc or LLC), is not normally included, i.e. Microsoft or Wal-Mart. When disambiguation is needed the legal status, main company interest or "(company)" can be used to disambiguate. For example, Nike, Inc., Halifax (bank) or Converse (company).
If the legal status is used to disambiguate, it should be abbreviated in the article title (Corp., Inc., LLC, LLP, Ltd., plc, etc.), unless company literature and logos clearly shows a preference for the unabbreviated title (CBS Corporation). Likewise there should be no comma prior to the legal status unless specified by the company literature.
In the article itself, the title sentence of the article should include the abbreviated legal status. For example: Generic Corp. Ltd. is largest provider of widgets in the world.
Please note, "company", "international" "group" "industries" or similar suffixes are not legal statuses and should be included as specified by the originating business, for example it is the JPMorgan Chase & Co., but the The Coca-Cola Company. Also, "corporation" may be part of the company title rather than its official legal status (Birla Corporation).
Legal status may be included when disambiguation is not needed for companies that have commonly used acronyms such as Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) or British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC). Do not abbreviate the legal status in these cases.
