Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (companies)/Archive 1

Archive 1

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Potential problems/questions

• Snowy Hydro Limited: Keep long form [1] --Scott Davis ^Talk 00:18, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
• AMP Limited - states that it is normally referred to as "AMP" - privacy policy says AMP Limited
• Alumina Limited -already reverted - ref logo on front of website
• Aristocrat Leisure Limited - this is formal name, either keep long or drop "Limited" completely [2]
• Australian Egg Corporation Limited - already moved to Australian Egg Corporation web site uses that or AECL
• Australian Submarine Corporation - usually known as ASC. Contact details is ASC Pty Ltd. Other parts of website have ASC Pty Ltd and ASC Pty Limited (even both on same page).
• CSL Limited - keep at current name[3]
• CSR Limited - CSR is preferred. Current name is second choice.
• David Jones Limited - preferred name is David Jones. Current name is OK for company (I found "Limited" on the website eventually, but not "Ltd."). David Jones (department store) is probably best. **
• Elders Limited - Given the range of things linking to Elders, that redirect should change to a disambig. Name should stay at Limited, not Ltd.
• GWA International Limited - keep long form.
• MFS Limited - keep.[4] Second choice would be MFS.
• Nufarm Limited - front page of website contains Nufarm, nufarm, Nufarm Ltd. and Nufarm Limited. Preference appears to be Nufarm for the business and Nufarm Limited for the company. **
• Promina Group Limited - website front page contains promina, Promina Group and Promina Group Limited
• Publishing and Broadcasting Limited - keep.[5]
• Transfield Services Limited - I think Transfield Services is marginally preferred as trading name. [6] **
• Wesfarmers Limited - consider move to Wesfarmers or keep as is. [7] **
• Woolworths Limited - keep based on logo

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)

The First sentence section currently reads:

"Regardless of the article title, the first sentence of the article should include 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."

so I presume this issue is now resolved. --trevj (talk) 20:29, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

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)

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)

Is this the correct approach?

I can see the reasoning for this naming convention but I wanted to request it be reconsidered. I am speaking as a lawyer, but I think it's important generally for everyone. Although it may seem unimportant, it does in fact make a huge amount of difference whether a company is a plc or an ltd (in the UK) or an AG or a GmbH (in Germany), or an SE (in Europe) or Inc, and so on.

The first thing is that different regulations apply to different company forms. So if you are a plc (a public company) then directors may have more onerous disclosure requirements to a stockmarket. If it is a large company (usually a plc) there may be different rules on employee involvement in European countries.

The second thing is different laws apply to different business forms. So if we only have the business name, and we do not know whether it is a company or not, it is hard to know whether it is a partnership, a sole trader, a company limited by guarantee, a trust, a charity and so on.

The third thing is laws require that companies themselves disclose their status. So the reason that companies always say "BP plc" or whatever in their company documents is that they are required to by law (unless it's simply a trademark that is being used). The reason for that is, companies with limited liability must disclose that fact to the people they contract with: this means, contracting parties are warned that if a company goes bust (insolvent) they may not get all or any money back.

Often businesses will change their form: so under the Limited Liability Partnerships Act 2000 a number of UK accountancy and law firms switched, and must now call themselves "LLP". Another example is in Germany especially and around Europe, many large companies are reincorporating as "SE", the new European Company. This is newsworthy, and important information in an article page name.

So I would kindly request that this naming convention be reconsidered. It is vastly important to know both what form of business or form of company it takes, and this is the simple information that the suffix provides. It is easy to write up a List of business forms by country (although with a quick look I see no article yet unfortunately!) to explain this. And it takes little to keep that detail in (abbreviations are always legitimate). And as an encyclopedia I think it's important that this information be displayed, and surely easy to be accurate. Wikidea 20:20, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Changing names - Blackwater Worldwide-->Xe (company)

I was hoping to find some clarification past the advice of this guideline's parent on whether to use the most-common-name or official name of a company after a name change. I'd be tempted to say that the latter is far more appropriate, in most cases, but I'd invite additional comments from people who follow this page at Talk:Blackwater Worldwide. MrZaius^talk 02:30, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Provision for common usage?

I'm a little worried given the past several questions appear to have not had any response, but hopefully some folks still have this talk on their watchlist and can clarify... The current version of the convention reads:

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).

Unfortunately, that seems to leave little provision for situations like The Hartford and, indeed, even JPMorgan Chase (which, despite being mandated otherwise in the convention, is currently titled without "& Co."). I believe the point should be clarified, potentially along these lines (and per much earlier conversation above):

In some cases, leading articles 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 originating business, for example, The Walt Disney Company or The Coca-Cola Company. In other instances, such as with JPMorgan Chase & Co., the common usage of JPMorgan Chase would be preferred. In some limited cases, "Corporation" may also be a key part of the company's name in common usage, rather simply a designator of its official legal status, such as with News Corporation and others.

Does that seem reasonable? Perhaps we should also mention common usage in the lead, so as to more directly address situations like "The Hartford"? user:J aka justen (talk) 07:18, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

After a while with no response here, I integrated the changes I posited above and also snuck in a few others. The changes have so far either not raised any objection or otherwise gone unnoticed, but if anyone has any qualms, please feel free to change, fix, or revert as you feel appropriate, of course. Otherwise, I hope the clarifications help. user:J aka justen (talk) 08:51, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

it's still a bit screwy

the overall wiki policy is 'common usage'

but we still have lots of "Blblble Company"

even though people wouldn't normally say that —Preceding unsigned comment added by 170.170.59.138 (talk) 16:43, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Capitalisation of family firms

Should the capitalisation be "Ebenezer Crump and Sons" or "Ebenezer Crump and sons"?

See also WP:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 September 28#Category:John_Brogden_and_sons in relation to John Brogden and Sons (company) vs. Category:John Brogden and sons (family). Andy Dingley (talk) 08:25, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Responding to this long stale topic to document that the above category and company articles were eventually capitalized using title case. In general, this convention doesn't address capitalization since it's addressed elsewhere in our naming conventions: stick with common usage, within limits. Those limits apparently tolerate unusual punctuation, such as with Yahoo! and lack of uppercase letters and spacing, such as with athenahealth. As noted above, completely uppercased words as official company names are currently considered by consensus to be inappropriate for article titles, such as with NVIDIA being located at Nvidia. I haven't included these unusual examples since they are more along the lines of exceptions to the rule, and, since, as noted above, this convention tends to do more with what words to include or not include in the article title, as opposed to how to capitalize or space them. jæs (talk) 21:43, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Unwise application of NCCORP re Resorts of the Canadian Rockies

I re-changed the title of this article, which User:Miracle Pen had invoked this page's guideilnes over without thinking about the consequence; see this name change to Resorts of the Canadian Rockies (company) and to me it's pretty obvious why either this has to be the case, or adding "Inc." back into the title should be restored. It's unwise to play into the hands of marketing people's manipulations of search engine parameters....and it's pretty obvious that hte primary use of "Resorts of the Canadian Rockies" should be about ALL resorts in the Canadian Rockies, NOT just those owned by this company, or to this company alone. Comprende?Skookum1 (talk) 20:14, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Petrovietnam

There is a discussion concerning the name of Vietnam Oil and Gas Group (Petrovietnam) in English. The common name of this company is Petrovietnam, however there are two options for spelling, both options (Petrovietnam and PetroVietnam) in use. E.g. Reuters have used in different news different form ([12] and [13]). Same goes with other websites. The company's English website uses spelling Petrovietnam. I would like to ask a guidelines which form should be used in the Petrovietnam's article. Beagel (talk) 04:30, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Société nationale des pétroles du Congo

Clarification is needed concerning translation of the company names. If the official company name is Société nationale des pétroles du Congo, should we use the official name or could we replace the name with translated name (the National Petroleum Company of the Congo)? As the current guidelines says nothing about translation, I propose to make some additions to the guidelines to address this issue. You are also welcome to comment the naming request here. Beagel (talk) 05:55, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Some guidance on this point would be useful. Translations of company names where there is no official English version could be problematic, as there may be subtle variations possible which could lead to confusion. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 08:22, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Is WP:OFFICIALNAME sufficient guidance? IceWelder [✉] 11:28, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Regarding Common Names

The guideline states the following:

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).

I have to say, this seems quite foolish and nearsighted. I believe it should say something like the following, which is almost the complete opposite of what is stated:

Generally, articles should be titled by the legal name of the corporation (e.g. American International Group instead of simply "AIG" or The J.M. Smucker Co. instead of "Smuckers"). Note that the rules outlined in other sections of this article with respect to inclusion of "Corporation", "Incorporated" apply. Of course, where applicable, redirects from commonly used names should be employed.

In some cases, companies with extraordinarily long or complex names can have their article titled by a common name, but this should be the exception and not the rule (e.g. DuPont instead of "E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company").

My reasoning is this, the common name of companies is so subjective, and subject to frequent change (e.g. a company's decision to "rebrand" itself, etc.) that it results in many unnecessary discussions about article titles. For example, the PricewaterhouseCoopers article is currently titled PwC -- although there is a Request for Move discussion going on currently -- despite the fact that "PwC" was simply a marketing rebranding of the company. Similarly, there have been a number of discussions about what to call the Eastman Kodak article, with some advocating for the legal name "Eastman Kodak" while others advocating for the common name "Kodak". With a guideline like I propose, these discussions would be unnecessary and editors would be free to spend their time on more beneficial tasks.

Lastly, in an encyclopedia, consistency is almost as important as content. With every company's article being titled by a seemingly random "common" version of the company name, consistency is lost. If, however, the guideline were updated to require the legal name, unless an extenuating circumstance existed (e.g. DuPont), then the matter would be settled. Note that, of course, redirects should be used from all common names.

Here is a list of articles where I think we have it right. jheiv ^{talk contribs} 07:45, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

• I'll also point out that I think we probably have The Hartford wrong. It probably should be titled The Hartford Financial Services Group and a redirect from The Hartford should be used. If 3M was still Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing, I'd probably be okay with either, but I'd lean toward the full "Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing". If IBM were still International Business Machines, I'd undoubtedly advocate for that and redirect IBM. jheiv ^{talk contribs} 07:51, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose—I don't like this proposal. We generally use the common name of subjects for the titles. Why do it differently for companies? Like you say; consistency is important. A name change because of rebranding won't necessarily mean the title of the article should change—it would change only if RS reflected the change. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 09:27, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

  Please check out my note below. I think this is too subjective of a policy and naming an article based on the prevailing name of RS's is nearsighted and will introduce more issues than it will resolve. jheiv ^{talk contribs} 19:54, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

  You repeat the "consistency" argument in your note. But again, to be consistent we should be using the common name, not doing something different just for company names. What is special about company names? Why not products, publications, etc? Is this enormous disruption worth whatever benefits you believe it will achieve? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 21:35, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose No need to do it differently here - and there's no reason you can't introduce the article with a bolded Full name as it is. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 12:22, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose - I think the current policy minimizes reader surprise. If there is a name that can be identitifed as being most commonly used then using that best meets readers' expectations. Companies do not change their names that often and even if they did that doesn't mean the company's selected name will be the name that is most commonly used. And if the common name changes it's no biggie to change the article title. Not having to change the title is not a good reason to use the legal name. Jojalozzo 16:16, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

• Note: There is no reason that justifies such hodge-podge naming. It's not "user surprise" because the redirect from all common names would still exist (and still come up in the AJAX search bar). Similarly, any surprise they get by being seeing the title Honda Motor Company rather than the expected Honda would be resolved in the lead. I'll also point out that they would experience a very similar surprise if the article were simply Honda since the legal name would still be in the lead. So thats not a real compelling argument. "If the common name changes" is simply too subjective for an encyclopedia. What is the definitive source of a company's common name? Themselves? The WSJ? People you encounter at the local supermarket? This is a serious question and reasonable minds could disagree. Then what happens when one editor advocates that the common name changed? Should they just be bold and change the article title based on their interpretation of the prevailing common name? A policy like this is simply flawed and nearsighted and will bring a lot more confusion and time wasted discussing the prevailing common name than is necessary. The current discussion regarding whether the Eastman Kodak corporation's article should be named Eastman Kodak or simply Kodak is a prime example. jheiv ^{talk contribs} 19:51, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

  It sounds like one of your goals is to reduce the likelihood of editorial disputes. If so, I don't think I prioritize that goal the same as do you. I enjoy peace and quiet like most of us but I think it's a mistake to engineer content to make it easier for editors. Our first responsibility is to the reader and even when it means struggling behind the scenes. Jojalozzo 20:18, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

  This is true -- it is certainly one of my goals. But the other important one is consistency. Consider a printed encyclopedia -- articles are listed by their formal name and sometimes, under informal names, there are "See _______" entries. We have the advantage of being able to add innumerable redirects for informal or common names, but to where should they all point? It seems logical that they point to the one unique article title out of the bunch: the official, legal name. jheiv ^{talk contribs} 02:07, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

  As a reader, I am most happy seeing common names for titles. I do not want to see legal names, Latin names, or other technical nomenclature except in parenthesis in the first sentence. I see where you're coming from but in my opinion it won't be an improvement for the reader. Jojalozzo 03:11, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

  That is a point well taken, and I can't really argue with that opinion. I mean, I disagree, and think the proposal adds structure in the midst of chaos, but I suppose that's just the engineer in me. jheiv ^{talk contribs} 04:00, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

• Not too keen on this. We go with the most common names of entities generally. Yes this is somewhat subjective sometimes (not usually) and the proposer's point that this sometimes leads to time wasted on figuring out the correct title occasionally is well taken, but I wonder if the cure isn't worse than the disease here. I would not want to rename SU-155 to Investment and Construction Group of Companies SU-155 and so forth. Herostratus (talk) 03:01, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

  I agree, that some companies' legal names are prohibitively long. (It is also true that some companies' legal names contain non english words or characters -- another case which I think should be exempted). However, the I believe the proposal adds some structure and eliminates a significant amount of ambiguity (there are at least two discussions about corp. article names that would be resolved by a guideline like this -- Eastman Kodak/Kodak and PricewaterhouseCoopers/PwC -- and that's just two I've come across. In fact, it is what prompted me to make this proposal).

  As a reader, not much is different in my experience.

  Common name titles: Common name in title, both common and legal names in lead, both common and legal names as suggestions-as-you-type in the search box.

  Legal name titles: Legal name in title, both common and legal names in lead, both common and legal names as suggestions-as-you-type in the search box.

  Note: underlined text differs

  Is it possible that someone could turn away from the article because of the possibility of a confusing title, who would have otherwise stayed had there been a more recognizable title? Sure, but I suggest that that possibility is minuscule. On the other hand however, the guideline resolves a great deal of ambiguity and subjectiveness from the process of creating and maintaining these articles and introduces some consistency akin to a printed encyclopedia. I acknowledge there is a (trivial) downside, but I argue that the upside far outweigh it.

  As an aside, I'm sorry for my diatribes. I feel really strongly about this and haven't been sure I've adequately explained my reasoning. For the most part, I think I've done that now and I'll limit any responses to shorter comments, if anything. Thanks for bearing with me. jheiv ^{talk contribs} 04:00, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. Wikipedia is the de facto unofficial keeper of common names for topics. It does this by consistently reflecting in the title of each article the most common name used to refer to the topic of that article. Official/legal/formal names, on the other hand, are normally reflected in the lead sentence of the article. Yes, that means titles have to be changed when the common name for the topic changes, and some times the most common name is not obvious and discussion is required, but that's what makes WP reasonably reliable in its role as keeper of common names. This proposal would undermine this valuable feature, for very little reason. I urge the proposer here to reconsider his position, and join the rest of us in defending Wikipedia's role as keeper of common names.

  More specifically, titles of all articles should be whatever best answers the naming criteria questions at WP:AT. In some cases that may be the legal name, but usually some other name is more recognizable, natural and concise.

  In fact, meeting the naming criteria as much as possible is all that all that should matter in titling these articles. I just reviewed the whole guideline, and I must question the need for a specific naming guideline for company names at all. What does this guideline add to WP:AT? Isn't this creep? --born2cYcle 21:19, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

• Support  Good proposal, we should generally prefer formal names for identification.  IBM, for example, is frequently caricatured, see here.  Unscintillating (talk) 18:36, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose One of the strengths of Wikipedia is timeliness. Consistency is a good goal but not a primary one. We're an encyclopedia for everyday people, and should use the common names generally in effect. Gerardw (talk) 14:20, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
• Weak Support I can see this being useful, especially where there may be doubt as to what the most familiar name of the company is; this has the advantage of objectivity. Of course, there would have to be proper re-directs, references to popular names in the lede (generally bolded) and so on, but that's easy enough. On the other hand, I see no evidence that the current system is regularly leading to major problems that can't be resolved any other way, so it's not like there's a desperate need for this, and familiarity for the reader is obviously a plus, so I don't have strong feelings about it. Anaxial (talk) 20:58, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
• Moderate support. I like the idea, but not enough to peeve some of the other editors and to force everybody to go through a renaming process for all business articles. How about just making it a suggestion rather than a policy? Or how about making it apply to new articles and not retroactively? Yours, GeorgeLouis (talk) 18:56, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose - Unnecessary deviation from WP:COMMONNAME principle. The "the common name of companies is so subjective" could potentially be applied against any topic. That's the whole reason we have Wikipedia:Search engine test. NickCT (talk) 04:38, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
• Support. Subjective names invented to be the common name, based on googling are more prone to errors. Eldizzino (talk) 23:08, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

RFC – WP title decision practice

Over the past several months there has been contentious debate over aspects of WP:Article Titles policy. That contentiousness has led to efforts to improve the overall effectiveness of the policy and associated processes. An RFC entitled: Wikipedia talk:Article titles/RFC-Article title decision practice has been initiated to assess the communities’ understanding of our title decision making policy. As a project that has created or influenced subject specific naming conventions, participants in this project are encouraged to review and participate in the RFC.--Mike Cline (talk) 16:36, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Naming Variations?

So, based on a discussion about whether an article title should be changed, I am curious if there can be a larger discussion about naming conventions. Specifically when it comes to English Variations.

Without going into specifics, I am looking for a general discussion about which version would be appropriate, either for an existing name, or a name change based on the company name. From my point of view, everything should be kept as neutral as possible, to help eliminate as much arguing back and forth over which one to use.

Many companies are based in one country for their headquarters and base of corporate operations, meanwhile, they could have either a sub-division, or a wholly owned subsidiary operating in another country, or they have just registered themselves in that other country under a slightly different name for "DBA" purposes. If the main company is using a specific version of English in it's name in it's home country, and then has it's subsidiary or sub-division operating in another country with the local variation to it's name based on the common regional english variation.

I would think for overall encyclopedia accuracy, the article title should reflect the spelling used by the main, parent company in it's country's english variation. No?

For the sake of example - A company is located in the UK with the name Painter's Colour, and then they also do business in the US, under the name Painter's Color, then an article here about that company should respect the english variation the company uses and be named Painter's Colour here on Wikipedia, with the summary part of the article doing like so many others do and say something like, (Painter's Color in the US). I feel this is accurate because it reflects the distinct tie to a specific version of english tied to it's primary location and corporate

Then there is always the idea of companies that change their name, let's say this previously mentioned company was bought by another company, Artist's Color, that is located in the US, they keep the company names, but they then move all manufacturing and corporate offices for Painter's Colour to the US and only sell the product in the UK, but no other corporate functions there. Wouldn't that then make sense to change the title of the company article to Painter's Color?

I understand the aspects of WP:ENGVAR and find them to be overall fairly good, however, I feel that some people cling to them a little too tightly and a little too literal instead of paying more attention to their spirit since there can't really be any absolutes anywhere, and people seem to treat these as absolutes. I think that WP:TITLEVAR is more appropriate to take into account in the situation above, since a companies corporate location and center of business would be what creates a tie to a particular variation of english. I can see WP:COMMONNAME being referenced, however, I don't think WP:COMMONNAME is appropriate when the only difference is something like choosing the english variation of a word should be used as the title, I believe the spirit of WP:COMMONNAME is more along the lines of not needing things like Inc, Corp, or long company names when the company is only referred to by one of two words of a much longer official name. I think priority would go back to WP:TITLEVAR with reference to the national tie based on corporate headquarters and operations location is much more WP:COMMONSENSE regardless of the overall company history, or what they might have for country specific name variations.

Two requests

• 1-If you have previously been in a discussion with me on another page regarding a version of this discussion, please allow some time for others to share their opinion before you start repeating the same things over and over again here. I am looking for some untainted responses from people on the outside of those discussions.
• 2- Please do not look at my history, I am not looking to argue about other things, just the discussion I have laid out above, unrelated to any extraneous forked discussions about assumed motives or anything else, this is also why I have requested for anyone I have discussed with to not join this discussion immediately.

74.104.150.176 (talk) 04:14, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

---Discuss Below---

Clarification for users with limited capabilities

There are insults (edit warring accusations) etc. at Talk:Bilfinger SE#Article name coming from User:Dormskirk, a user that claims to have attended Newcastle University. So, that user probably has some basic understanding of the English language.

I don't why the user is making the insulting claims, points other users to NCCORP and repeats parts of the first sentence in the section "Article title", while ignoring the others.

I put points the user seems to ignore in bold. Any other suggestions? Eldizzino (talk) 23:05, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for highlighting the sentence in bold. I now understand the point you are making. By the way I do not have "limited capabilities", "learning disabilities" etc! Dormskirk (talk) 00:04, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

1st sentence of article begins with The ABC Company

How does the reader tell whether the company name is ABC Company or The ABC Company? 50.136.247.190 (talk) 06:30, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

The first instance of bolded text in the first sentence of the lead paragraph should identify the official name. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 06:17, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Official title in lede

Regardless of the article title, the first sentence of the article should normally begin with the full legal name of the company

This is bad advice, as written. Perhaps it fits for medium and large businesses/corporations, who are known formally and informally by a combination of their common name and their legal name. But companies that are solely known in reliable sources by their common name (read: not their legal filing name) do not need to be written in the most elaborate form possible in the article's most precious sentence (its first). The guideline's advice, as written, goes against the lede guideline on opening sentences on duplicating the common name in the lede and generally having the lede be as unastonishing as possible. I'm especially referring to articles in which the company is not known anywhere as "Joe's Flowers, LLC" except legal filings but editors use this guideline to insist that LLC belongs in the lede.

I recommend that this section on lede advice be removed and that this naming conventions page limit its scope, as other naming conventions pages do, to advice on article titles, so as not to give advice conflicting with other areas of the MoS. czar 16:38, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Sorry User:Czar, just came across this. I'm going to put it back the old way until we get broader discussion (which I have solicited at WP:WikiProject Companies); the change you propose would require changing literally thousands of company articles. And IMHO there is good reason for "Joe's Flowers, LLC" (if the LLC part is verifiable, or course) since an entity's corporate form is arguably the most important fact about the entity. Certainly a rewrite would be better than a deletion: baby, bathwater, all that. UnitedStatesian (talk) 21:20, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

And I'll point out the sentence in question has been a part of this guideline since it became a guideline, over 11 years ago. UnitedStatesian (talk) 21:40, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Note: Please see the discussion at User talk:UnitedStatesian, where this company name guideline is interfering with the accuracy/clarity of the article in question. ɱ (talk) · vbm · coi) 22:02, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The lede/lead guideline already gives the necessary advice on using official names. There isn't a need to conflict with that. Also I don't know how you're determining that "thousands of company articles" would need to be changed—the lede guideline already applies to those and there's no rush to changing them to common language. czar 22:05, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Can you point me where the lead guideline talks about legal names for companies? Asking in good faith. UnitedStatesian (talk) 22:33, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

"If an article's title is a formal or widely accepted name for the subject, display it in bold as early as possible in the first sentence" (WP:BOLDTITLE) It doesn't say to add honorifics, official suffixes, etc. czar 23:09, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

So based on that quote the lead guideline gives advice on using official names: don't use them. That's why I said "thousands of articles." Look at Cracker Barrel (a featured article) or Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan Chase: the first sentence conforms to WP:NCCORP before you made the change, but does not conform to what you quote from WP:BOLDTITLE. Many, many others would be in conflict with the guidelines without the sentence here. What problem are you trying to solve? UnitedStatesian (talk) 23:27, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Disambiguating companies with the exact same name

Telltale Games was a video game developer but which shut down in 2018. Within the year, their assets were bought by a wholly separate company, LCG Entertainment, and they relaunched a new "Telltale Games" but otherwise with no corporate-related connections to the original, outside of the fact this company gained most of the IP assets. Until recently, we've not had to worry about a separate page for this company as they have not produced anything of note. But we now have them coming out with new games, and likely will need a new article for this company on its own (which we have sourcing for notability, that's not the issue).

I have not encountered any examples or advice for how to disambiguate these two. I don't know which will be the primary topic but regardless, I am looking for a good disambiguation term. I'm wondering if something like "Telltale Games (2019 company)" would be good, or if there is a better route. --Masem (t) 07:17, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

Okay, I did hit a few pre-established examples: News Corporation (1980–2013) distinguished from News Corp (2013–present), and Viacom (1952–2006) distinguished from Viacom (2005–2019). --Masem (t) 14:40, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

Name changes of major corporations

What level of evidence is necessary to change the title of an article on a major corporation, such as a bank? In particular, if the name change indicates or suggests a change of ownership from one internationally known corporate group to another, where the original name might suggest a different affiliation to what legally exists, and is clarified by the new name? · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 14:06, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

&

Should article page names include ampersands (&)? I'm not talking about "JPMorgan Chase & Co.", which is discussed elsewhere on this Talk page; I'm talking about companies like Ault & Wiborg, whose page I recently created. The company seems always to have referred to itself with the &, so there's that. But it turns out that Wikipedia has minor difficulties with pages whose titles contain &. For example, the {{commons cat}} template throws an error in edit mode—yet displays correctly. And when you use the visual editor to try to create a wikilink to the page, it won't autofill to "Ault & Wiborg Company". And the URL is a bit "ugly": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ault_%26_Wiborg_Company". All these are minor issues, but there may be others. Anyway, the conflict is this: the company evidently preferred its name be rendered with &, but we could change it to "and" and avoid several known issues. Is there Wikiguidance on this? PRRfan (talk) 15:10, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Yes, if the official name contains contains an ampersand, it should be reflected in the article title. Not just for companies but for most subjects. "JPMorgen Chase and Co." is unofficial and artificial. IceWelder [✉] 15:16, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! Is that just common sense ("company uses &, so we use &"), or is there a MOS page with relevant guidance? PRRfan (talk) 15:21, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

You might be looking for MOS:&: "retain an ampersand when it is a legitimate part of the style of a proper noun, such as in Up & Down or AT&T". IceWelder [✉] 15:27, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Ah! I guess if it works for AT&T, it'll work for a printer-ink manufacturer. Many thanks. PRRfan (talk) 15:29, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

The name on the building

Quoting from the & discussion above: Yes, if the official name contains contains an ampersand, it should be reflected in the article title. Not just for companies but for most subjects.

Similar discussion, and I'd like people to comment on this, please.

Earlier today I've renamed the article Hell's Kitchen (restaurant) to have the full name that's seen on the building of the restaurant, as seen in the photos which are attached to the article. The exterior says "Gordon Ramsay Hell's Kitchen" in two places (and in a third place, "Gordon Ramsay HK" for short). All four words form the complete official name.

It's also | the name at the official website. It's also the name given | in culinary guide reviews, such as Gayot's Guide (from the late André Gayot, and now continued by his children).

I believe that the entire name on the building, "Gordon Ramsay Hell's Kitchen," should mainly be used throughout the article, and as the name of the article, so I have made those changes. Ramsay uses his name as part of the restaurant name in other cases as well (his 3-Michelin-star "Restaurant Gordon Ramsay," his chains "Gordon Ramsay Burger" and "Gordon Ramsay Fish & Chips" and "Gordon Ramsay Steak," and the new one in Boston called "Ramsay's Kitchen by Gordon Ramsay").

@Valereee believes that because people would, in their opinion, commonly call it "Hell's Kitchen" in casual conversation, and because, in their opinion, the full name is over-promotional in using Gordon Ramsay's name too much, that my change ought to be reverted and the restaurant simply called "Hell's Kitchen" in the article name and throughout the body.

I can see the validity of Valereee's viewpoint. But just because people commonly call a fast food restaurant "McD's" is no reason to rename the McDonald's article. And I don't think it's overly promotional to call the article the actual full name from the side of the building. I believe that the person who created the article should have called it by the complete name right from the start, and not doing so was an error on their part. Canarsie83 (talk) 22:18, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

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).

I think the WP:COMMONNAME isn't Gordon Ramsay Hell's Kitchen. It's Hell's Kitchen. That's how people will search it, that's how people refer to it, that's the most common way it's mentioned, even if in the first mention or the title of a source it gets the full treatment. The name of this (and other Ramsay restaurants) is a promotional ploy to get Ramsay's name out there as often as possible, and I don't think Wikipedia should be participating in that. McD's is not the common name for McDonald's. McDonald's is the common name for McDonald's. McD's may be a shorthand way of referring to it, but that doesn't make it a common name.

And we're currently referring to the restaurant within the article every time with Gordon Ramsay's name. Right now this 400-word article says "Gordon Ramsay" 10 times (including "Gordon Ramsay Hell's Kitchen" 8 times). It's silly. And it feels promotional to me. Valereee (talk) 22:23, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

Convenience link: Gordon Ramsay Hell's Kitchen (restaurant). Valereee (talk) 22:37, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

Update examples in first paragraph?

I mean, It just looks dated. While Borders Group was a major retailer in its day (and, in the name of full disclosure, I enjoyed working at their store while I was in grad school), it's been gone for over a decade. And Be, Inc. is just an absolutely terrible example; it was obscure as heck in its short decade of existence and has been gone since the beginning of the century having had zero long-term impact on anything. Surely actually relevant companies like Apple, Inc. would make a better example because of their recognizability to the common reader. oknazevad (talk) 04:51, 22 December 2022 (UTC)