Company names

Much confusion surrounds the practice of abbreviations in the names of companies, and for this purpose the Chief Registrar of Deeds issued the following guidelines, as far back as 1981.

The addition of the words "Limited" or "Proprietary Limited" to the name of a company is clearly only for the purpose of indicating whether such company is a public or private company. There can, therefore, be no objection to these words being translated to the other official language when the name of a company is used in deeds. Apart from the words "Proprietary" and "Limited", no translation to the other official language of the name of the company can be permitted.

The use of the recognised abbreviations "Pty" and "Ltd" (in Afrikaans "Edms" and "Bpk") for the words "Proprietary" and "Limited" when used in deeds is also acceptable.

It may be of interest that the new programme that has been compiled for the computer provides that, for the purpose of making an enquiry, the computer will ignore the words "Proprietary", "Limited", "Eiendoms" and "Beperk".

It is trusted that the above now sheds more light on the mystified practice of abbreviations.

Republished with permission from SA Deeds Journal