s 22 Company names
(1) A company shall not be registered under the 1948 Act by a name— (a) which includes otherwise than at the end of the name any of the following words and expressions, that is to say, “limited”, “ unlimited” or “ public limited company ” or their Welsh equivalents ; (b) which includes otherwise than at the end of the name abbreviations of any of those words or expressions ; (c) which is the same as a name appearing in the index kept by the registrar in pursuance of section 23 of this Act ; (d) the use of which by the company would in the opinion of the Secretary of State constitute a criminal offence ; or (e) which in the opinion of the Secretary of State is offen- Sive. (2) Except with the approval of the Secretary of State, a company shall not be registered under the 1948 Act by a name which— (a) in the opinion of the Secretary of State would be likely to give the impression that the company is connected B2 c. 62 Companies Act 1981 in any way with Her Majesty’s Government or with any local authority ; or (b) includes any word or expression for the time being specified in regulations made under section 31 of this Act. (3) In determining for the purposes of subsection (1)(c) above whether one name is the same as another, there shall be disregarded— (a) the definite article where it is the first word in the name ; (b) the following words and expressions where they appear at the end of the name, that is to say, “company”, “and company”, “company limited”, “and company limited”, “limited”, “unlimited”, “ public limited company ” or their Welsh equivalents ; (c) abbreviations of any of those words and expressions where they appear at the end of the name; and (d) type and case of letters, spaces between letters, accents and punctuation marks ; and “and” and “ &” shall be taken to be the same.