Back to Help Center
What are the rules for my company name?
Your company name (trade name) may use letters and words, with spaces between words — an English-style name is perfectly possible.
The official rules allow the following in a registered trade name: Japanese characters (kanji, hiragana, katakana), Roman letters (upper and lower case), Arabic numerals, and six symbols: the ampersand, apostrophe, comma, hyphen, period, and middle dot. Symbols generally cannot start or end the name (a period at the end is allowed when it marks an abbreviation), and spaces may only separate Roman-letter words.
One rule cannot be bent: the corporate designation meaning "Godo Kaisha" must appear in Japanese script as part of the registered name, and it cannot be omitted or replaced with a foreign-language equivalent. It may come before or after your name.
For your company's English name, you are free to choose between "Godo Kaisha" and "LLC" — for example "ABC Godo Kaisha" or "ABC LLC" — for use on English contracts, your website, and business cards.
Two kinds of names should be avoided. First, words reserved for regulated industries — terms meaning "bank," "trust," or "insurance" cannot be used by companies outside those industries. Second, names identical or confusingly similar to well-known companies or registered trademarks: even if the registration itself goes through, trademark and unfair-competition disputes can follow. If the name will carry your brand, we recommend running a trademark search as well.
On the same-name check: the legal rule is that two companies with the identical name cannot be registered at the same address. In practice, we recommend a stricter comfort standard — make sure no company with the same name exists in the same city. Meeting that standard avoids confusion and downstream trouble.
We check your preferred trade name during the pre-check stage and flag any issue before the formal filing.
The official rules allow the following in a registered trade name: Japanese characters (kanji, hiragana, katakana), Roman letters (upper and lower case), Arabic numerals, and six symbols: the ampersand, apostrophe, comma, hyphen, period, and middle dot. Symbols generally cannot start or end the name (a period at the end is allowed when it marks an abbreviation), and spaces may only separate Roman-letter words.
One rule cannot be bent: the corporate designation meaning "Godo Kaisha" must appear in Japanese script as part of the registered name, and it cannot be omitted or replaced with a foreign-language equivalent. It may come before or after your name.
For your company's English name, you are free to choose between "Godo Kaisha" and "LLC" — for example "ABC Godo Kaisha" or "ABC LLC" — for use on English contracts, your website, and business cards.
Two kinds of names should be avoided. First, words reserved for regulated industries — terms meaning "bank," "trust," or "insurance" cannot be used by companies outside those industries. Second, names identical or confusingly similar to well-known companies or registered trademarks: even if the registration itself goes through, trademark and unfair-competition disputes can follow. If the name will carry your brand, we recommend running a trademark search as well.
On the same-name check: the legal rule is that two companies with the identical name cannot be registered at the same address. In practice, we recommend a stricter comfort standard — make sure no company with the same name exists in the same city. Meeting that standard avoids confusion and downstream trouble.
We check your preferred trade name during the pre-check stage and flag any issue before the formal filing.