The company name can not be identical to the business name is already registered in the Brønnøysund Register. With identical means that it is totally identical and include all letters, spaces, numbers and characters of an existing name. The legal form of the company is not counted, so the company HENRIK AS, HENRIK ANS or HENRIK DA are considered identical. A letter, number, space or a character is enough to consider two names being different.
Use the Brønnøysund Register search function to check the company name.
Main requirements:
- Private limited liability company must always have the letters AS or the word “aksjeselskap” in the name;
- The name of the NUF must be identical to the name of the main company with added letters NUF
- Sole proprietorship must contain a surname of the owner (name optional);
- Must contain at least three letters of the Norwegian alphabet;
- Only certain symbols are used to complement letters (see on the right);
- It cannot be just the name of a country, county or municipality (e.g. OSLO AS is not suitable). Exceptions to this requirement apply to Norwegian sole proprietorships. If the company owner’s last name consists of only two letters (e.g. MO) or his last name coincides with the name of a county (e.g. NORDLAND), then such name will be approved;
- Cannot be identical to an already registered name;
- It cannot be a name that could be misleading or offensive.
What characters are accepted in the company name?
- Norwegian letters: A-Å;
- Numbers;
- Space;
- Commas, periods, exclamation points, question marks, dashes, colons, semicolons, slashes, apostrophes, parentheses, paragraph and ampersand;
- Plus, minus, multiplication, division, equality and percent sign;
- Letters with accents: À, Á, Â, È, É, Ê, Ì, Í, Î, Ò, Ó, Ô, Ù, Ú, Û, Ý. Letters with umlaut: Ä, Ë, Ï, Ö, Ü.
Consider that the company names which are too similar may increase the risk of confusion by post authorities, telephone directories and internet search engines. Therefore even if you can formally choose it, it is always a good idea to keep your company name different from existing company names.
