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Company names

OneContact 1.0.0docs/company-names.md at 90204cd Markdown

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CompanyName and CompanyNameParser read a company name into: leading article ("The"), base name, legal form (with its ISO 20275 ELF code and a canonical abbreviation), "trading as" part and "c/o" part. Every part carries offsets into the input. Rules only; the legal form comes from the compiled GLEIF list, so a new jurisdiction is a data update. Nothing is invented: a form that fits several codes has no code (see Candidates), and the base name is never completed or corrected.

The ELF data set

Source: the GLEIF Entity Legal Forms code list (ISO 20275), version 1.6 of 2026-02-19, CSV, pinned in upstream/gleif-elf/PIN with its SHA-256 (4002 rows, 3599 codes, 130 country codes). Licence: CC0, as GLEIF states on its open-data and LEI-data terms pages; the credit line is in THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md and in the notice packed with the library. tools/fetch/gleif-elf.sh fetches the file by exact URL and checks the hash; the ingest tool tools/Ingest.GleifElf checks the CSV header names, then writes the tables below at build time. The same pinned file gives byte-identical tables.

Table forms: a 32-bit little-endian row count, then per row one byte active (1 for ACTV, 0 for INAC) and eight strings, each a 16-bit little-endian byte length followed by UTF-8: code, country code, sub-division code, local name, language code, transliterated name, local abbreviations, transliterated abbreviations (abbreviations separated by ;). Rows are sorted by country, code, language, then file order. Table version holds the list version text.

Matching

A legal form is looked up in an index of the folded text (see docs/name-keys.md for folding) of every name and abbreviation, plus our own alias list for spellings people use every day that the list does not carry (CZ/SK s.r.o., a.s.; PT Lda; IE DAC; FR SARL; ES S.A., ...). Each alias names a listed form of its country; one that no longer names a listed form is skipped, never fails the load. The aliases are ours, written from the forms' published names.

  • The form is taken from the end of the name, longest match first. A prefix form is taken only if it is an abbreviation of the hinted country, or one of a few unambiguous prefix abbreviations (UAB, SIA, ZAO, ...).
  • Forms of at most two letters need capitals or real dotted letters (S.A., A/S), or a country hint, so that a word such as "as" or "sa" is not a form.
  • d/b/a and DBA are trading-as markers, never legal forms.
  • A hinted country restricts the candidates to its rows when it has any; if it has none, the result says the form lies outside the hinted country (company.legal-form-outside-country).
  • Inactive (INAC) rows are used only if no active row matches (company.legal-form-inactive).

Candidates and the ELF code

The result lists every distinct code the written form can mean (Candidates: code, country, name, active). The ELF code is set only when exactly one code remains; otherwise it is empty and the info issue company.legal-form-ambiguous is reported.

Canonical abbreviation

For a single code the abbreviation is taken from the rows that carry the written form: the one with the fewest letters; among equals mixed case over capitals when it is longer than three letters ("Pty Ltd" over "PTY LTD"), then fewer punctuation marks, then a capital initial. The canonical text replaces what was written ("Limited" gives "Ltd", "Aktiengesellschaft" gives "AG"), except when the two differ only in case ("Oy" is not rewritten to "oy"). A composite form ("GmbH & Co. KG") is kept as typed. With several codes the common abbreviation is used if there is one.

Other parts

  • Leading "The": split off when more words follow. It is not part of the base or the key.
  • Trading as: d/b/a, dba, doing business as, t/a, trading as, trading under; the canonical text writes d/b/a or t/a. An empty trading name is company.empty-trading-name.
  • Care of: c/o, care of. A text that starts with c/o and holds nothing before it is read as the company after it (company.care-of-only).
  • A comma between words is kept ("Smith, Jones & Partners"), a comma before the legal form is not.

Company key V1

base | token: the base name folded to lower-case words (an ampersand is the word "and"; the leading "The", the trading name and the care-of part are left out), a bar, then the token of the legal form:

  • the ELF code when the written form maps to one code;
  • otherwise ~ followed by the folded common canonical abbreviation, with English synonyms unified ("Incorporated" and "Inc" give ~inc, "Limited" and "Ltd" give ~ltd), computed without any hint so that the key never depends on one;
  • nothing when there is no form.

Examples (fixtures in NameRuleTests): The ACME Muster GmbH & Co. KG gives acme muster|8Z6G; "Acme Holdings Ltd" and "ACME HOLDINGS LIMITED" share a key; "Acme" and "Acme Ltd" do not. A published version's output never changes; a rule change ships as a new KeyVersion.