How often a company name is enough, register by register
In the United Kingdom, 99.53% of the 5,464,811 live companies on Companies House carry a name no other live company shares once it is normalised. In France the figure is 67.96% of the 5,841,117 legal persons on SIRENE. Same code, same rules, and a very different answer to whether a bare name can identify a company.
This page publishes that census for 5registers: the figures, how they were counted, each register’s snapshot and licence, and a CSV of exactly those numbers.
- of 5,464,811 live companies on Companies House
- 99.53%
- of 5,841,117 legal persons on SIRENE
- 67.96%
- registers, each counted by the same code under its own universe rule
- 5
Five registers, one code path
Each share is the proportion of a register's counted universe whose normalised name no other entry in that universe shares. Read each one with its population. The five are never averaged, because they measure five different universes.
| Register | Universe counted | Unique normalised name | Snapshot |
|---|---|---|---|
| Companies HouseUnited Kingdom | 5,464,811 live companies | 99.53%The baseline every other region is measured against. | Companies House Free Company Data, |
| Colorado Secretary of StateUnited States | 2,191,009 extant legal persons | 97.76%State-level. A first review of the universe rule wrongly read 'live' as 'compliant' and excluded 1.13 million extant delinquent entities; the rule was corrected. | Business Entities in Colorado, data.colorado.gov dataset 4ykn-tg5h. Snapshot date not recorded; counted for the report dated . |
| SEC EDGARUnited States (filers) | 6,471 tickered filers with complete rows | 99.91%Reported beside the combined figure and never blended into it: closed-end fund families at one address measure lower on the digital tier, which is a register-shape finding rather than an engine one. | SEC EDGAR tickered registrants and their per-CIK submissions. Snapshot date not recorded; counted for the report dated . |
| SIRENEFrance | 5,841,117 legal persons | 67.96%A third of French companies share their exact name — 1,003 live companies sit on one name. A French file needs a town or postcode column, and with one it measured 2,998 of 3,000 on the postcode tier. | INSEE SIRENE stock files (legal units and establishments), |
| BrønnøysundNorway | 450,754 corporate forms | 97.78% | Brønnøysund Enhetsregisteret full download. Snapshot date not recorded; counted for the report dated . |
The same figures as a file: company-name-uniqueness.csv, one row per register, with the population, the snapshot and the source licence on the same row as the share.
How each share was counted
Three steps, run the same way over all five registers. What differs from register to register is only the universe rule, which decides what counts as a live company there.
- 01
Read each register's own bulk product once, under that register's universe rule, into one row shape.
- 02
Normalise every company name with the product's own name normaliser, the same code for all five registers: case and accents folded, “&” read as “and”, dots and apostrophes removed so the letters either side join (“S.A.R.L.” reads as “SARL”, “O’Neill” as “ONeill”), every other punctuation mark turned into a word break, and trailing legal-form words such as Ltd, Limited, SAS, SARL or AS stripped. “Acme Ltd” and “ACME LIMITED” become one name.
- 03
Count, for each register, the legal persons whose normalised name occurs exactly once in that register's universe, and divide by every legal person in it.
In every register: live entries only, legal persons only, and every row complete — name, number, town and postcode. Where a register lists sole traders under their own names, as SIRENE and Brønnøysund do, those rows are left out; Companies House never registers sole traders, which is what keeps the five universes comparable.Normalisation is the product’s own step, defined in the glossary under normalisation.
Each register’s universe rule
- Companies House · 5,464,811 live companies
- Live statuses, including companies with a proposal to strike off, and complete rows only.
- Colorado Secretary of State · 2,191,009 extant legal persons
- Extant rather than merely compliant: good standing, exists, delinquent, noncompliant and registered agent resigned, because a delinquent entity keeps its legal existence and cures by filing. Corporate, LLC, partnership and cooperative types only; type codes that could not be decoded are excluded rather than assumed.
- SEC EDGAR · 6,471 tickered filers with complete rows
- One row per CIK, tickered registrants only, each with a complete SEC-filed business city and ZIP code. A register of filers, not of incorporation.
- SIRENE · 5,841,117 legal persons
- Active legal units that are published for reuse, in legal categories 5 and 6 — commercial and civil companies — each taking its town and postcode from its head office.
- Brønnøysund · 450,754 corporate forms
- Not deleted, bankrupt or being wound up, and corporate forms only: AS, ASA, ANS, DA, KS, NUF, SA, BA and SE. Sole proprietorships are excluded, because a sole proprietor's registered name is a person's name.
The census counts normalised-name collisions, not legal identity. Two identically named companies are two companies; the share says how often a bare name is enough to tell them apart, not whether any company is who it says it is.
What these figures do not say
Four things a reader quoting one of these shares should know first.
- A share is a ceiling, not a resolution rate. It is the most a name-only column can decide in that register. What the resolver actually decided, for each set of columns a file can arrive with, is measured separately, with its own fractions, on the accuracy page.
- The United States appears as two registers, and neither is a national register of incorporation: Colorado’s Secretary of State is one state register of fifty, and SEC EDGAR is a federal register of filers rather than of incorporation. The two are reported side by side and never added together.
- Three of the five snapshots carry no recorded date. The measurement report names the bulk product read for Colorado Secretary of State, SEC EDGAR and Brønnøysund but not the day it was downloaded, so those rows say so instead of supplying one.
- These are our counts over each register’s data, not statistics the registers publish. The universe rule decides what was counted, and a different rule gives a different share.
Internal fixtures only. The historical 2026-08-29 per-tier recording covers 317 GB companies with identifier-rich arrivals seeding the catalogue first; the context tier includes country and registered-town prose. Its legacy replay has no full-prompt-verified calls and cannot certify current calibration. The September 5 CI reports cover 1,176 labelled pairs and 705 records over 250 companies using offline stubs. These are not independent customer holdouts or live production validation; the 99% minimum-input product target remains unmet. Scope is company and organisation identity only — not people, vessels, bank-account ownership, sanctions or emissions. Results may not be used for eligibility decisions about individuals, including employment, credit and tenancy.
The registers, and the terms each publishes under
Each register's own data page, and the licence deed where it has one. The universes are theirs; the counts and the shares are ours.
- Companies House Free Company Data Product
Companies House. Companies House Free Company Data, 2026-08-01. Published under Open Government Licence v3.0.
- Business Entities in Colorado (Colorado Secretary of State)
Colorado Secretary of State. Business Entities in Colorado, data.colorado.gov dataset 4ykn-tg5h; snapshot date not recorded, counted for the report dated 2026-08-30. Published under Public domain, as declared on the dataset's own page.
- SEC EDGAR company search
SEC EDGAR. SEC EDGAR tickered registrants and their per-CIK submissions; snapshot date not recorded, counted for the report dated 2026-08-30. Published under United States federal public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).
- Base Sirene des entreprises et de leurs établissements, on data.gouv.fr
SIRENE. INSEE SIRENE stock files (legal units and establishments), 2026-08-01. Published under Licence Ouverte 2.0 (Etalab).
- Enhetsregisteret open data, Brønnøysund Register Centre
Brønnøysund. Brønnøysund Enhetsregisteret full download; snapshot date not recorded, counted for the report dated 2026-08-30. Published under Norwegian Licence for Open Government Data (NLOD) 2.0.
- Open Government Licence v3.0
The terms Companies House data is published under. The reading of it here is ours, and it is not legal advice.
- United States federal public domain (17 U.S.C. §105)
The terms SEC EDGAR data is published under. The reading of it here is ours, and it is not legal advice.
- Licence Ouverte 2.0 (Etalab)
The terms SIRENE data is published under. The reading of it here is ours, and it is not legal advice.
- Norwegian Licence for Open Government Data (NLOD) 2.0
The terms Brønnøysund data is published under. The reading of it here is ours, and it is not legal advice.
How to cite this page
Cite the page rather than a figure lifted from it, so the population and the snapshot travel with the number.
Entity Bind (2026). Company name uniqueness by register: a census of five company registers. https://entitybind.com/research/company-name-uniqueness
Permalink: https://entitybind.com/research/company-name-uniqueness. Entity Bind declares no licence of its own for these figures. If you reuse them, cite this page and the registers they were counted from, each under its own licence listed above. The CSV carries the same figures on the same terms.
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