Reserving your corporate name serves two very important purposes

1. You will know whether or not the name you want to use is allowed (thus avoiding the Secretary of State's office from rejecting your Articles of Incorporation based on name unavailability or incorrect name selection), and
2. If allowed, reserving the name will ensure its availability for a period of 60 days by preventing others from taking your name.

Using the , you can reserve a corporate name within 1 business day (usually same day if ordered by 1:00 pm PST). You will be emailed a Secretary of State reservation number.

The California Secretary of State will NOT file an Articles of Incorporation if:

1. the name of the corporation is the same as or is too similar to the name of an existing corporation on file with the Secretary of State.
2. certain words are contained in the name of the corporation. The following list of words are generally NOT allowed:
         » Olympic, Olympiad, or Citius Altius Fortius
         » Bank, Trust, Trustee or related words
         » Cooperative, or any abbreviation thereof or any related word
         » National, federal, United States, reserve, deposit insurance,
         » Words referring to credit unions

The list above is not exhaustive. To make sure your chosen name is acceptable to the Secretary of State, it is best to check the availability of your desired name and reserve it prior to submitting your Articles of Incorporation. You can quickly and easily do so by using this for Name Reservation.

Generally, no. However, under the following two circumstances, the name of the corporation must end with one of the following words or abbreviations thereof: "Corporation," "Incorporated," or "Limited" (abbreviations are Corp., Inc., and Ltd.)

1. When the corporation is to be a statutory close corporation, or
2. When the name of a corporation is a personal name (you can also use the word "Company" in this case).

While the following list is not exhaustive, here are some other issues you should consider when choosing a name for your corporation:

1. If the corporation is to do business in another state, you should first check with that State to make sure your name is not already in use there and that you will be able to do business there with your chosen name (it's a good idea to do this even if you think the corporation will file a D.B.A. and use a different name in that other state).
2. You should check to make sure your chosen name for the corporation is not trademarked by another company by checking with the federal patent and trademark office, as well as telephone books, trade publications, and even the copyright office.