# The Companies (Northern Ireland) Order 1986 (revoked), Article 36: Prohibition on registration of certain names

Extent: N.I.

(1) A company shall not be registered under this Order by a name—
(a) which includes, otherwise than at the end of the name, any of the following words or expressions, that is to say, “limited”, “unlimited”, “public limited company”, “community interest company” or “community interest public limited company”;
(b) which includes otherwise than at the end of the name an abbreviation of any of those words or expressions;
(bb) which includes, at any place in the name, the expression “investment company with variable capital” or “open‐ended investment company”;
(bbb) which includes, at any place in the name, the expression “limited liability partnership”;
(c) which is the same as a name appearing in the registrar's index of company names;
(d) the use of which by the company would in the opinion of the Department constitute a criminal offence; or
(e) which in the opinion of the Department is offensive.
(2) Except with the approval of the Department, a company shall not be registered under this Order by a name which—
(a) in the opinion of the Department would be likely to give the impression that the company is connected in any way with Her Majesty's Government or with any district council; or
(b) includes any word or expression for the time being prescribed in regulations under Article 39.
(3) In determining for the purposes of paragraph (1)(c) whether one name is the same as another, there are to be disregarded—
(a) the definite article, where it is the first word of the name;
(b) the following words and expressions where they appear at the end of the name, that is to say—
“company”, “and company”, “company limited”, “and company limited”, “limited”, “unlimited”. . . “public limited company”, “community interest company”, “community interest public limited company”,. . . “investment company with variable capital”; and open‐ended investment company
(c) abbreviations of any of those words or expressions where they appear at the end of the name; and
(d) type and case of letters, accents, spaces between letters and punctuation marks;
and “and” and “&” are to be taken as the same.

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Source: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/nisi/1986/1032/article/36 (the official version)
Page: https://openlegislation.uk/companies-northern-ireland-order-1986-revoked/article-36
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: legislation.gov.uk, The National Archives.