 | This guideline documents an English Wikipedia naming convention. Editors should generally follow it, though exceptions may apply. Substantive edits to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page. |
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This page covers the naming convention of businesses, corporations, companies, public limited companies, limited companies, limited liability partnerships, limited liability companies, proprietary companies, unlimited liability corporations, and other types of corporation. A corporate entity is not excluded from this guideline if it is not-for-profit, state-owned, or a public–private partnership. The guideline, however, does not apply to a band, published work title, etc., that is named as if a corporation but is not one (e.g. Public Image Ltd, Scandal Incorporated, Murder, Inc.).
Whenever possible, the most common usageinindependent, reliable, secondary sources should be used (such as The Hartford for The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc.; and DuPont for E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company).
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. Examples: Microsoft for Microsoft Corporation, Nestlé for Nestlé S.A., Aflac for Aflac Incorporated, Deutsche Post for Deutsche Post AG, and JPMorgan Chase for JPMorgan Chase & Co.
The most common exception is disambiguation (see next section). Legal status may be included, even when disambiguation is not needed, when the entity's acronym/initialism includes the letter for the status designation; e.g. British Overseas Airways Corporation, because its acronym is BOAC.
When disambiguation is needed, the legal status, an appended "(company)", or other parenthetical can be used to disambiguate: Oracle Corporation, Apple Inc., Kashi (company), and Cassell (publisher).
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. but Dana Incorporated; Victor Gollancz Ltd but Padma Bank Limited). 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.).[disputed – discuss]
A leading definite (The) or indefinite (A, An) article is normally not included in the article title. This also applies to foreign-language equivalents, like Spanish El/La, German Das/Der/Die, etc. A common exception is names of publications, and publishers named for them, e.g.: The New York Times, The New York Times Company.
In some cases, leading articles (usually The) are an integral part of the company name (as determined by usage in independent reliable sources) and should be included, especially when necessary for disambiguation, e.g.: The Cheesecake Factory and The North Face.
Another exception is the uncommon case in which the acronym/initialism of the entitity includes the T for The; thus The International Cat Association, because its acronym is TICA.
A suffix, such as Company, International, or Group, that is an integral part of the company name (as determined by usage in independent reliable sources) should be included, especially when necessary for disambiguation or when it is part of the company's acronym/initialism, e.g.: Louis Dreyfus Company, JBS Foods International (JBSI), and Mirage Retail Group. In some limited cases, Corporation may also be such an integral part of the company's name in common usage, rather than simply a designator of its official legal status, such as with Power Corporation, Digital Equipment Corporation, and News Corporation.
In cases where an ampersand (&), or more rarely a plus sign (+) is an integral part of the company name (according to usage in independent sources), such as in AT&T and Springer Science+Business Media, do not replace the symbol with and. However, do not impose such a symbol simply to mimic a graphical logo: Gulf and Western Industries not Gulf+Western.
When a company name contains a numeral, do not substitute a spelled out version: 3M, not ThreeM.
Non-alphanumeric symbols found in logos and other trademark stylizations are not used in Wikipedia article titles: Macy's not Macy★s. Exceptions are very rare; e.g., Toys "R" Us has quotation marks around the R because it is treated this way consistently in independent reliable sources. (This example should not be taken as an instruction to add quotation marks to symbol-for-word substitutions in other proper names.)
Unusual capitalization abounds in commercial marketing. Wikipedia does not apply any of it to organization names except when a strong majority of independent reliable sources do so for the specific case in question. This especially includes both all-caps stylization of names that are not acronyms/initialisms (Sony not SONY) and all-lowercase treatment, though in most cases of the latter, the article title would actually resolve to the same page (Adidas and adidas are an equivalent title, but we use Adidas in the text, following the preponderance of independent sources).
Camel case tradmarks are common, and one should be used in a company article title when it is strongly dominant in the independent source material for that entity: EquaTerra, not EquaterraorEqua Terra. Do not impose camel case on a name that does not conventionally use it: Craigslist not CraigsList (much less Craig's List).
A company name that begins with a lower-case letter, and which is conventionally written this way by the vast majority of independent sources, should be in such a form in Wikipedia content, but will end up at a title that begins with a capital letter because of how our MediaWiki software handles letter case. These articles should have a {{lowercase title}} template added near the top of the page to change the display. See eBay for an example.
The exceptions enumerated above may combine, in unusual cases; for example, The Walt Disney Company and The Coca-Cola Company include both a The and a Company suffix, following the dominant use in independent reliable sources about this entity.
