Federal NUANS® Name Search

When you submit your proposed name with the related NUANS® search report your name will be approved or rejected accordingly.

The name regulations instruct the Director to reject proposed names that :

• are likely to cause confusion
• lack distinctiveness
• connote government, a university, or a financial intermediary such as a trust and loan, or an insurance company, or a bank
• use an individual's name without consent
• are deceptively misdescriptive
• are obscene
• use prohibited terms

In addition, the Act gives the Director responsibility with respect to legal elements and bilingual names:

Legal Elements - A corporate name will be rejected if it does not have one of the following legal elements:

Limited, Limitée, Incorporated, Incorporée, Corporation, Société par actions de régime fédérale, Ltd., Ltée, Inc., Corp., S.A.R.F.

The legal element used in the English and French forms should correspond

Bilingual Names - You may request your corporate name in an English form only, a French form only, a combined English and French form, or separate English and French forms. Your corporation may use and be legally designated by any such form. [see subsection 10(3) of the CBCA]

A combined English and French form has only one legal element. "Inc." is a suitably bilingual element for this purpose, e.g. Coiffure CHICO Hairdressing Inc. [see Regulation 34] If you select a combined English and French form for your name, you must use the full combined form to legally designate your corporation. If your corporate name has separate English and French forms, your business can be legally designated by either of them.

As a general rule, the English and French forms of a corporate name do not have to be literal translations, but a corporation cannot have French and English forms of a corporate name that are so different as to appear to belong to two different corporations. Where there is concern this may be the case, the proposed name will be rejected.

A request for a bilingual name must often be accompanied by two NUANS® reports. The following criteria should be used to judge whether or not a bilingual name (whether with separate or combined English and French forms) requires two searches.

Where the English and French forms are phonetically similar, only one search may be necessary

For example: DDD Distributions Inc. (English form)/ Les Distributions DDD Inc. (French form)

Names that are exact translations but are phonetically different require two searches
For example:
Blue Cross Blood Collection Inc. (English form)
Collecte de sang Croix Bleue Inc. (French form)

Some English and French forms may be phonetically different, but share a substantial distinctive element and differ only in respect of a minor, commonly used descriptive element. In such a situation, a single search is often sufficient because it will turn up both English and French names.
For example:
Placements Protar Holdings Inc. - substantial distinctive plus minor common descriptive elements
Quadra Management Inc./ Gestion Quadra Inc. - substantial distinctive plus minor common descriptive elements