What “available” actually means in New York
New York does not ask whether a name is identical to another. It asks whether your name is “distinguishable on the records” of the Department of State. That is a much higher bar, and it is where most rejections come from.
People assume that if Empire Trucking Inc. exists, they can register Empire Trucking LLC. They cannot. The State strips the designator before comparing, so those two names are the same name.
What does not make your name different
Change only one of these and your filing will still be rejected:
- ✗ The entity ending. LLC, L.L.C., Limited Liability Company, Inc., Incorporated, Corp., Corporation — all ignored in the comparison.
- ✗ The word “The”. “The Empire Trucking” is “Empire Trucking”.
- ✗ Punctuation and spacing. Commas, apostrophes, hyphens, periods, extra spaces.
- ✗ Upper or lower case. EMPIRE, Empire and empire are one name.
- ✗ Singular vs plural. Adding an S is not a difference.
- ✗ “And” vs “&”. Same word as far as the State is concerned.
What does work is a genuinely different word — adding a distinct term, dropping one, or choosing something else entirely. Our checker above applies these same rules, which is why it will tell you a name is taken even when that exact text is nowhere in the database.
Your name has to end the right way
| Entity | Must contain one of |
|---|---|
| LLC | Limited Liability Company · LLC · L.L.C. |
| Corporation | Incorporated · Corporation · Limited · Inc. · Corp. · Ltd. |
Some words need permission first
Certain words cannot go in a New York company name without written consent or approval from another State agency. The common ones involve banking and finance (bank, trust), insurance, and education (school, college, university, academy, education). There are others, and the list is easy to trip over by accident.
If your name contains anything in that territory, the Department of State will hold the filing until the consent is produced. Tell us the name and we will flag it before you pay a filing fee for a rejection.
Should you reserve the name?
You can file an Application for Reservation of Name with the Department of State. It costs $20 and holds the name for 60 days.
Honestly? Most people do not need it. If you are forming within the next few weeks, reserving the name costs you $20 and buys very little — you may as well file. Reservation earns its keep when you are waiting on a partner, a licence, or funding before you can form, and you cannot risk the name going in the meantime.
A name search is not a trademark search
This is the mistake that costs real money. Clearing a name with the Department of State only means New York will register it. It says nothing about whether somebody already owns it as a trademark. A registered name and a protected brand are two different things, and a federal trademark can be enforced against you even though the State happily accepted your filing. If you are about to spend on signage, a wrap, packaging or a website, search the federal trademark register too.
Trading under a different name
If you want to operate under a name that is not your registered one, that is an assumed name — a DBA. It is a separate filing, and for a New York corporation or LLC it is filed with the Department of State rather than the county clerk. Your legal entity keeps its registered name; the DBA is the name on the door.
We file your Articles of Organization or Certificate of Incorporation with the Department of State for $200, plus the State's own fee. We run a formal name check before filing, so you are not paying for a rejection.
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