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consult with a licensed attorney and/or CPA in your state.
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In this video, we are going to teach you how to research and choose your desired LLC name.
The purpose of this video is to help you: avoid infringing upon someone else's name
rights, to help you differentiate your business name from existing entities, and make sure
your desired LLC name is available for use.
In order to make sure your desired LLC name is available for use, you will need to search
it against the existing organized entities on the State's online database.
We will first walk you through some requirements and restrictions and then later we will show
you how to perform your search name requirements.
Your LLC name must end with the words "Limited Liability Company", or the abbreviations "L.L.C."
or "LLC".
Using the abbreviation "LLC" is the most common.
For example, Joe wants to start a company by the name "Joe's Landscaping Services".
Since he is forming an LLC, he must file under the name "Joe's Landscaping Services, LLC".
Again, using the abbreviation "LLC" (or the full word "Limited Liability Company") is
a requirement when forming an LLC.
Name restrictions.
Your LLC name cannot imply that it is a corporation.
You are not allowed to use the words "Corporation" or "Incorporated", or the abbreviations "Corp."
or "Inc." anywhere in your LLC name.
Let's look at our example again.
Since Joe wants to form an LLC, he cannot call his company "Joe's Landscaping Services,
Inc., LLC" or "Joe's Landscaping Services Incorporated, LLC".
Your desired LLC name must also be "distinguishable".
This means it cannot be too similar to the names of existing organized entities that
are found in the results during the search of the database.
We will now illustrate several examples of distinguishability, and we will provide examples
you may see while performing your search.
Differences in designators, which are the identifiers at the end of a business name.
do not create distinguishability.
Examples of designators would be "Inc." or "Corp." (for Corporations) and "LLC" or "L.L.C"
(for Limited Liability Companies).
There are other designators as well, but these are the most commonly used.
For example, your desired LLC name is "Smith Investments, LLC", but during the search of
the database let's say you found the business under the name "Smith Investments, Inc."
In this example, your desired LLC name would not be available for use.
You would have to think of an alternative name that is unique and different.
An example would be "Smith Financial Group, LLC".
Grammatical differences.
The following do not create distinguishability: differences and variables in singular, plural,
possessive forms of a word.
For example, your desired LLC name is "Apple Farm, LLC".
Let's just say during the search you found the business under the name "Apple Farms,
LLC", or let's say you also found a business under "Apple's Farm, LLC" (with an apostrophe
s).
Both of these names, although slightly different, are too similar and therefore your desired
LLC name would not be available for use.
An example of an alternative name would be "Apple Orchard, LLC".
The following do not create distinguishability: differences in articles such as "A", "An",
or "The".
For example, your desired LLC name is "Print Shop, LLC".
Let's just say that during the search the database you found a business called the "The
Print Shop, LLC", or you found a business called "A Print Shop, LLC".
Again, although they seem different, these names are all the same in the eyes of the
State, and therefore your desire LLC name would not be available for use.
An alternative name would be "Printing Solutions, LLC".
The following also do not create distinguishability: the use of conjunctions such as "And", "Or",
and the ampersand symbol.
Let's say your desired LLC name is "Night & Day, LLC" with the ampersand symbol.
But during your search, you find a "Night and Day, LLC", or you found a "Night Day LLC".
Again, both of these examples are too similar, and your desired LLC name is not distinguishable
and therefore not available for use.
An example of an alternative name will be "Moon and Sunshine, LLC".
The following also do not create distinguishability: the use of certain punctuation such as hyphens,
slashes, periods, commas, etcetera.
Let's say your desired LLC name is "Peter Paul & Mary Studios, LLC", but during your
search you found "Peter-Paul-Mary Studios, Incorporated", or you found a "Peter, Paul,
and Mary Studios, Incorporated".
Again, both of these examples are too similar, and therefore your desired LLC name would
not be available for use.
An alternative example would be "PPM Productions, LLC".
Alphanumeric: differences in numerical, or written numbers does not create distinguishability.
For example, let's say your desired LLC name is "Three Teachers Consulting, LLC" (with
a number "three" spelled out), but during your search of the database you found a company
called "3 Teachers Consulting, LLC" (with the number "3").
Again, these are deceptively similar; the State does not look at these as any different
and therefore your desired LLC name would not be available for use.
An alternative example would be "A Few Good Teachers Consulting, LLC".
Deceptively similar names that are too similar to existing organized entities also do not
create distinguishability.
For example, your desired LLC name is "Speedy Delivery Services, LLC", but during your search
let's say you find "Speed Delivery Services, LLC", or you find a "Super Speedy Delivery
Services, LLC".
Again, these names are too similar.
Therefore your desired LLC name would not be available for use.
An example of an alternative name would be "At Your Door Quick, LLC".
Takeaways: as you can see, just filing the paperwork with your desired LLC name is not
as straightforward as you may have originally thought.
The most important takeaways from showing you all these examples are as follows: it's
important to make sure your name is truly unique and not too similar to the names of
existing organized entities; if your desired LLC name is unavailable for use, either by
its exact match already being used, or by it being too similar to an existing name,
we recommend using some creativity and coming up with a variation of your original LLC name,
so that the name is now unique and is "distinguishable", and stands apart from other businesses.
Some additional tips to think of when creating your LLC name are: Make your LLC name easy
to spell.
You want to make sure people can find you when they're looking for you.
Make your LLC name short.
Shorter names are easier for people to remember.
Make your LLC name have a positive connotation.
Leave people with a good feeling when they hear about your business.
You are now ready to search your desired LLC name against the State's online database.
We showed you a number of examples where the desired LLC names were not available for use,
but don't worry.
In the next part of this video, we will provide plenty of examples of names that are available
for use, so that you can best understand the database and the results that you see.
Let's head over to the State's online database.
The link below this video will take you there.
Welcome to the State's online database.
For our 1st example, let's say your desired LLC name is "Lone Star Ranch, LLC".
Remember that during our search queries we're not going to enter the letters "LLC".
Let's first search "Lone Star".
Enter the words into the box and then click "Search by Name".
Anytime you see "Search will return any number of entries" it means the search is too broad,
and we need to be a little bit more specific.
In this case, I'm going to go ahead and click on "Return to Taxable Entity Search", and
this time let's enter "Lone Star Ranch".
'm going to go ahead and copy that, and then paste it in the box, and let's hit "Search
by Name".
Although you want to go with the name "Lone Star Ranch, LLC", there's an existing corporation
under that same name, and in this example, your LLC name would not be available for use.
Let's look at another example.
There's a quick link up here called "Taxable Entity Search" which is going to take me right
back to the search page.
For this example, let's say your desired LLC name is "Temptations Interior Design, LLC".
Let's first search the word "Temptations", I'm going to copy and paste that word here,
and hit "Search by Name".
Again, the reason that I'm just typing in the word "Temptations" is I want to see as
many businesses as possible to make sure that my name is truly unique.
As you can see the list (about halfway down), there's an existing business by the name of
"Temptations Interior Design Gallery", and although my desired LLC name was "Temptations
Interior Design, LLC", these 2 names are too similar.
and we recommend going with an alternative.
Let's look at another example.
For this example, let's say your desired LLC name is "Bob's Auto Detailing, LLC".
Because the 1st word of the business is unique with the apostrophe "s", we want to search
in multiple forms.
Let's just first search the word "Bobs".
I'm going to enter that into the search box and hit "Search by Name".
As we can see in the list of existing businesses, there's nothing similar or identical to "Bob's
Auto Detailing.
So far so good.
Let's refine our search, as we want to search in multiple different forms.
Let's go just search the word "Bob".
Remember, anytime you see "Search will return X number of entries", we have to go back and
refine our search.
So let's just try "Bob Auto" and see if there's anything under that name.
In this example, it says "Business Name Bob Auto was not found".
Again, that's a good sign; it means there's no businesses that start with the words "Bob
Auto".
Let's go back and search again another way.
This time, let's search "Bob apostrophe s".
I'm going to copy and paste that into the search box and hit "Search by Name".
Again, too many entries; you're going to find this quite often when doing your search.
Let's just go back and refine it a little bit.
In this case, let's do "Bob's Auto".
All right, as we can see, this search yielded some different results from some of the earlier
searches.
we have "Bob's Auto Glass", "Auto Repair", "Auto Sales", "Salvage", "Truck", "Automotive",
and "Autoworks".
Since our desired LLC name is "Bob's Auto Detailing", we now have thoroughly searched
the database and we know that there are no existing names that are either identical or
too similar.
In this case, your desired LLC name of "Bob's Auto Detailing, LLC" would be available for
use.
The reason you want to search all forms of grammar is that the Texas database is not
that intelligent, and you want to make sure to search all different forms.
Again, most importantly, to make sure that your name is unique.
Let's look at a few more examples.
Let's say that our desired LLC name is "Big Tease Hair Salon, LLC".
I'm going to copy the words "Big Tease" and search those.
Here we have "Business Name Big Teas was not found".
In this example, we know there are no businesses in the state of Texas that start with the
terminology "Big Tease".
In this example, the desired LLC name "Big Tease Hair Salon, LLC" will be available for
use.
Let's look at 1 final example.
Let's say your desired LLC name was "Chocolate Cupcake Factory, LLC".
For this example, let's just search the word "Chocolate".
The reason that we're searching only the 1st word of this business, is we want to well
as many search results as possible in order to make sure that our business name is truly
unique and distinguishable from the existing organized entities.
Just make sure that if you do the search and you end up with this message that says "Search
returned hundreds or thousands of entries", we need to refine it a little bit, and in
that case we would search "Chocolate Cupcake".
However, let's just search "Chocolate" and see what we come up with.
I'm going to enter the words "Chocolate" and hit "Search by Name".
So here we can see we have 114 matches that were found.
Let's scroll through this list, and as you can see it's in alphabetical order, and let's
see if there's anything similar to our desired LLC name.
I'm going to go down to the C's (Chocolate Cake, Chocolate Cat, Chocolate Chip, Chocolate
Chip).
So far, I don't see anything with the words "Chocolate Cupcake", and in this example,
the desired LLC name of "Chocolate Cupcake Factory, LLC" is available for use.
The main takeaway of this portion of the lesson, is that the Texas database is finicky, and
is not the most intelligent and intuitive.
You want to search your desired business name as many ways as possible to yield the most
search results, in order to make sure that your name is unique and distinguishable from
the names of existing organized entities.
Once you find the name that is unique and distinguishable (therefore not too similar
to any existing businesses), you can then proceed to the next Lesson.
And this concludes the Name Research portion.