REGISTRATION OF COMPANY NAMES

Mr Chia Shi Teck asked the Minister for Finance whether the present system of registering company names in English only will be reviewed.

Dr Richard Hu Tsu Tau: English is the language upon which our constitutional and legal systems are built. Registration of companies and businesses in Singapore has therefore to be done in English. However, the Registry of Companies and Businesses (RCB) accepts registration of non-English names so long as they are given in romanised form. Thus, Chinese names can be registered in Hanyu Pinyin and Malay names are accepted for registration since the Malay language is based on the English alphabet system. RCB has on its register such names as "Huat Chye and Company", "Sabar Menanti Siang dan Malam" and "Daiichi Jitsugyo Co. Ltd". Since there is no requirement for names in other language forms to be registered, companies have the flexibility to use a name in any particular language form to represent their company, in addition to their legal English or romanised form.

We have studied the possibility of allowing names in other language forms, like Chinese, to be legally recognised and accepted for registration by RCB, and concluded that it would not be feasible to do so. The main problem lies in the complexities of the various languages, both in their written form as well as in their pronunciation. A Chinese character, for example, can be written in the original complex form or several simplified forms. It can be pronounced in different ways by different dialect groups. Also, different Chinese characters can have exactly the same pronunciation in Mandarin or other dialects. In addition, it is possible for a name in romanised form to be shared by different language forms. This happens when the meaning of a name in a particular language form and as expressed in romanised form is used in the registration of the company. For example, "Berjaya Pte Ltd" and "Sheng Li Pte Ltd" in their respective language forms could share the same English name "Success Pte Ltd". It would not be possible to build up a database that is able to link the different pronunciations, as well as different written forms and meaning to a specific word. Furthermore, even if these problems can be overcome, there are already existing companies with different English or romanised names sharing the same name in a particular language form. It would not be possible to decide which company should be allowed the exclusive right to use the name.

For the above reasons, the present system of registration of a company's name in English or romanised form remains the most feasible.