Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (companies)

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[edit] Completed poll

Relevant discussion and process behind the naming convention are at the completed poll Wikipedia:Naming conventions (companies)/poll --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 17:47, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Does it matter?

Does it really matter what the actual article title is? Just make sure to create all redirects for the legal names and other variants. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 18:49, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Given the response from several different people at the poll I think that there is interest. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 19:12, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
Nice work on the poll, thanks for taking that on! I sort of had expected the guideline to be a bit bigger after the end of it all though... Although I guess it says all there is to say, it seems funny as a page on its own. ++Lar: t/c 15:51, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the support and voting on the two naming conventions I've done recently. I'm looking for other "stamps of approval" before officially making it a guideline, but if no one else comes forward to contest it in the next few days, I will make it official and begin the fun renaming process. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 17:08, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New guideline

As I have begun the renaming process, I have noticed that some of the guidelines that were developed should not necessarily apply and have made changes to the naming convention to reflect those realities. This is intended as a flexible guideline and should reflect the reality of how companies are referred to while maintain an uniform presentation as possible. If you have any questions or objections to a renaming, feel free to let me know. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 15:39, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Japanese Corps

Yo, Reflex. Be careful on japanese corporations. See Mitsubishi Corporation for an example. Remove the word Corporation, and it becomes a whole different thing. Christopher Mahan 23:45, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, I'm trying to be careful in the renaming process. If it doesn't "sound right" I usually skip it. If I screw up please let me know! --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 04:03, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Naming conventions (companies)

Copied from User talk:Reflex Reaction:

Nobody ever refers to ILFC as "International Lease Finance." They always use "International Lease Finance Corporation." A simple Google search verifies this, but if you knew the industry you'd know this. The company name just sounds weird without the "Corporation" on the end. In this sense, people genuinely use "Corporation" as part of the common name. I suggest knowing the context in the future. The examples given for SAIC and BOAC are apropos here. —Joseph/N328KF (Talk) 22:05, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I have also moved back AWB Limited for similar reasons. It is never AWB Ltd. --Scott Davis Talk 13:42, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

The referenced poll seems to say to abbreviate the company status only if there is no clear preference for the longer form. The present state of this convention page does not reflect that. User:Reflex Reaction appears to be moving articles for Australian companies that were named ... Limited as that is the preferred form. Examples so far include AWB Limited, Alumina Limited and CSL Limited. Have I correctly understood the poll that the full form is OK for the article name if that's how the company is usually known? If so, could we please update the convention description to make that more obvious, and not rename Australian company articles to the short form? Thanks. --Scott Davis Talk 07:52, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Potential problems/questions

[edit] Abbreviated legal status in title sentence

Regarding this text at WP:NC#Companies:

[...] When disambiguation is needed, legal status, main company interest or "(company)" can be used to disambiguate: for example, Nike, Inc., Halifax (bank) or Converse (company). When the legal status is used, it is abbreviated in the article title. In the article itself, the title sentence of the article should include the abbreviated legal status. [...]

there was a difference of opinion (at Talk:Keane) about how this should be interpreted. Does it mean to say:

  1. The title sentence should include the abbreviated legal status, regardless of whether the disambiguation occurs by legal status or by other means.
  2. The title sentence should include the abbreviated legal status only if the disambiguation occurs by legal status.

Since this was apparently ambiguous (no pun intended), perhaps this should be clarified either way. --PEJL 18:53, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Multiple companies with same name

What do we do about multiple companies with the same name? Flying Flowers is a Jersey company with websites in New Zealand,[8] and USA/UK [9] [10] There seems to be an unrelated Dutch freight forwarder with the same name. [11] I'm not sure either or both would pass Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies), but what's the naming rule if they do? --Edibility (talk) 21:41, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

My thought would be to distinguish them by country, so in the example you give there would be Flying Flowers (Jersey company) and Flying Flowers (Dutch company) articles. For two companies with the same name and headquarted in the same country, maybe they could be distinguished by year established (Flying Flowers (1992 Jersey company)) or industry (Flying Flowers (Dutch freight company)). Richc80 (talk) 03:32, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I generally agree with Richc80, but I think that industry is more relevant and helps to distinguish between the companies with the same name better. --Gimlei (talk to me) 07:35, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] MOS issues

I have seen this brought up in requested moves and thought I would bring it here. There are some editors who think this guideline allows articles on companies to violate MOS and MOSTM. The current one being some editor who thinks that this somehow allows the article on Nvidia to be at NVIDIA. Looking at this guideline though, it appears that this guideline is only about whether to include the legal status of a company (i.e. "Inc.". "Ltd." "Co.", etc.), and not whether a article can use odd capitalizations. TJ Spyke 17:04, 6 March 2008 (UTC)