Chapter 1 General Provisions

Article 1 These Measures are hereby formulated in accordance with Provisions on Administration of Enterprise Name Registration, Measures for the Implementation of Administration of Enterprise Name Registration, Regulations of Guangdong Province on Business Registration and others, in order to further facilitate the ease of registration and simplify procedures for enterprise name registration.

Article 2 These Measures are applicable to autonomously applied enterprise names with the administrative division of "Guangzhou Municipal" or "Guangzhou", and relevant administration activities.

Article 3 The autonomous application of enterprise names mentioned in these Measures refers to the inquiry, comparison, judgment and application of the proposed enterprise name by the applicant autonomously through relevant systems, for which the applicant shall bear corresponding legal liabilities.

Article 4 The enterprise names shall be in Chinese characters conforming with national standards.

Chapter 2 Enterprise Name

Article 5 An enterprise name shall be composed of the administrative division, the entity name (or trade name, the same below), the trade or business operation characteristics, and the organizational form.

For business requirements, an enterprise may place the administrative division after its entity and before its organizational form.

Article 6 A proposed enterprise name shall not be the same as or similar to an enterprise name applied (approved) or registered in Guangzhou. Exceptions are made for similar names of enterprises with direct investment relations.

Article 7 With any of the following circumstances, a proposed enterprise name shall be deemed to the same to an existing enterprise name:

(1) Those are identical with an enterprise name applied (approved) or registered in Guangzhou;

(2) Those are identical with the former name of an enterprise which applied for a change less than one year;

(3) Those are identical with the name of any enterprise which canceled for less than one year;

(4) Those are identical with the name of any enterprise whose business license which has been revoked or canceled for less than three years.

Article 8 With any of the following circumstances, the proposed name from an autonomous application shall be deemed to similar to an enterprise name applied (approved) or registered in Guangzhou:

(1) Those of the entity names and the trades in the enterprise names are the same, but the organizational forms are different;

(2) Those of the entity names in the enterprise names are the same, and the trades have different expressions but the same meaning;

(3) Those of the pronunciations of the entity names in the enterprise names are the same with similarly shaped characters, and the trades have the same meaning;

(4) Those of the enterprise names do not contain the trades, but have the same entity name and different organizational forms;

(5) Those of the enterprise names do not contain the trades, but the pronunciations of the entity names are the same with similarly shaped characters;

(6) Those of the entity name in a proposed enterprise name without any trade is the same as that in an enterprise name applied (approved) or registered in Guangzhou with trade.

Article 9 Autonomous application of enterprise names shall not contain any of the following contents or words:

(1) Those being detrimental to State and social public interests, and going against social morality;

(2) Names of political parties, names of party, government or army departments, names of people's organizations, names of social organizations or military designations of military units;

(3) The Chinese phonetic alphabet and Arabic numerals;

(4) Those causing misleading to the public regarding its investors, sources of its products (services), and the like;

(5) Those being prone to be confused with the names of other legal persons and organizations, causing misleading among the public;

(6) Those causing deception or misleading to the public.

Article 10 Where the proposed enterprise names touches upon restriction of the use of words and contents, the enterprise shall submit the declaration in accordance with the rules.

Guangzhou Municipal Administration for Market Regulation shall formulate rules for the restricted use of enterprise names in accordance with laws, regulations and ordinance, and make them public.

Article 11 The entity name in an enterprise name shall be composed of two or more Chinese characters, but the names of administrative divisions at or above the county level shall not be used as the entity name.

The name of a natural person investor may be used as the entity name.