About organization names

An organization name is a linguistic designation used to identify a legally constituted or socially recognised collective entity that operates for a defined purpose within a specific institutional, commercial, governmental, or cultural context.

An organization name designates a corporate or collective entity, not a general concept.
An organization may be associated with multiple organization names over time or across contexts (e.g., legal name, trading name, abbreviated name, former name).
Organization names may have variants (orthographic, transliterated, abbreviated, branded) that refer to the same organization.
Organization names may be linked to jurisdictions, temporal validity, and legal status.

This definition is consistent with ISO 704 and ISO 1087-1 principles and aligns with authority control and corporate identity practices used in legal registries, libraries, and enterprise systems.

Distinction or terms from related entities

Organization name vs term: an organization name identifies a specific collective entity; a term designates a general concept.
Organization name vs concept: an organization name refers to an individual entity; a concept is an abstract unit of knowledge.
Organization name vs brand name: an organization name identifies the entity itself; a brand name identifies a product line, service, or market-facing identity.

Organization name metadata

Organization name: the text that provides the name for this entity
Name type (e.g., legal, informal, formal, nickname)
Organization type (e.g., Corporation, Cultural, Judicial)
Founding date: when did the organization come into being
Dissolution date: the date an organization ceased to operate
Jurisdiction: country where the organization can be found
Description: a description of this organization; a short overview
Role: Select how you intend to use this concept:
- Preferred: primarily the one to use
- Admitted: a variety of this same terms
- Deprecated: this concept is no long er in use
Status: Identify the status of adding this concept
- Draft: needs more info
- Under review: by another person
- Approved for use but not yet published
- Published and available
- There is a wide variety of status stages (see also 'Terminology workflow')
Language: designate which language this concept has been added using (e.g., English)
Note: add any other information that is relevant (e.g., a guidance note on the use of this concept)

Relationships

Organization names can have a range of relationships with other records:

Relationships with specific records (e.g., concepts, terms, or organization names):
- Select the relationships type and use a shortcut key to tag another term to link them together
  - For example, place name, physical name (products), abbreviation
Collections: tags that identify what collection(s) you have used this term in
Documents: tags that identify what document(s) you have used this term in

Authority & Source

Authority refers to an organization of group that provided evidence for the use of this term (e.g., judicial, government, published)
- Authority type: select the type of entity that provided authority for this term to exist
- Add the description of the authority or use the shortcut key to select the an existing person or oganization from your terminology data
Source refers to the external documentary evidence you used for compiling this record
- The title of the reference work that contains this evidence (the work should be in your reference library)
- Use the backslash key and enter the title to link the reference record
- Open the library record for this source by clicking the library icon
- Add a new reference record to your library by clicking the + icon

Adding a list into a document

When writing, a smart list of names can be generated from the terminology records that you have used in your document,

A smart list will produce a list of all names found in your document across all sections
See Style Guide / Terminology for editing the format of smart lists

Tips

Create different collections for easy maintenance, exporting, or sharing
We do not produce a list of work items, quotes, paraphrase, text blocks or websites as these are generally not required when writing documents.
You can export any collection in full directly from the collection record
If a name has been added in multiple places and needs updating, you can do so by editing the form and it will automatically update all instances
- For example, correcting a typo.
- If the name has been altered, add a new record.