Company name formatting

General principles



• The company name should, in general, reflect what appears on screen, along with the country code. However, there are several cases where the primary name should differ somewhat, and a few other controlling principles.
• In general, the primary company name should be:
1. The most recent onscreen name. Where the company is inconsistent about its onscreen name
2. The onscreen form of the name (provided it's not overly simple; see below about "broadest name"); or where it is not possible to determine either of these
3. The legal form of the name as determined from, e.g., government filings (subject to the "legal suffixes" note below)
4. Written in lower case characters
• In all cases, names are also subject to the standard modifications below.
• Where an onscreen name differs from a primary name (except for modifications from the rules below), please include an "(as ...)" attribute to properly represent the onscreen name.

Broadest name



• Always use the broadest company name when creating a new company ~(if the above section is not applicable) -- that is, the form that encompasses the largest part of the company.

Example: Artisan Entertainment over Artisan

• However, use judgement, particularly for distributors, when the name is significantly different; for example, MTV, Nickelodeon, Spike TV, etc. instead of Viacom.
• In these cases, please indicate the actual onscreen company name with an "(as ...)" attribute.

Common abbreviations



• If the company is widely known under an abbreviation, include the abbreviation in "( )" at the end of the name.

Example: Use Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) over MGM or Metro Goldwyn Mayer

• Even if the company primarily uses the abbreviation, we would still like the full name.

Example: Music Television (MTV) [us]

Country codes



• Company names must include country codes in brackets. There is a list of country codes. (For simplicity, we have omitted these codes from most of our other examples.)

Example: Endeavor Talent Agency [us]

Duplicate company names



• When submitting a new company which shares a name and country code with one already on the database, our preference is to distinguish these with Roman numerals.

For example, if we had the following companies already listed on the site:

IMDb Entertainment [us]

IMDb Entertainment (II) [us]

a new company with the same name in the same country would need to be listed as IMDb Entertainment (III) [us].

• If the new company has the same name but is in a different country (ie. IMDb Entertainment [de]) the Roman numeral is not required.

Legal suffixes



• Do not use qualifying details or marks of distinction describing the type of legal incorporation (such as LLP, Ltd., Inc., Corp., GmbH, Sarl, LLC, PLC). These will be omitted from the company name.

Example: Use Loeb & Loeb rather than Loeb & Loeb, LLP; Buchwald & Associates rather than Buchwald & Associates, Inc.

• The exception is a lawyer who uses their first and last name as the title of their company. In these cases the qualifying detail of Esq. will remain.

Example: Vicki Roberts, Esq.

Branches

General branch rule

• Companies that have multiple branches in different locations, but are the same organization should be listed as one company.

Example: The Gersh Agency has a Beverly Hills, CA branch and a New York, NY branch.

Branch name

• Branch names are derived from City, State/Province (USA & Canada) or City, Country (all other countries)

Example: Los Angeles, CA; Vancouver, BC; Paris, France