Open your state’s website for filing steps and forms.
North Carolina LLC Name Availability
North Carolina does not count a numeral in place of a word as a difference between two names. On October 9, 2026, its business search, left on the setting it opens with, returned 4 records for 4 Oaks and 111 for Four Oaks.
Check a business name.
We use a third-party name-check service for this preliminary check. It does not search the official state website directly.
Checking your name.
Checking name availability in your selected state.
Your result
Final name approval is made by the state.
About this check
Starting With returned 111 records for Four Oaks, and All returned 152 for Oaks Four
The Secretary of State’s business search has two dropdowns above the name field. The first, Search for, can stay on Company By Name. The second, Words, opens on Starting With and also offers All, Any and Exact Match. That is how the form stood on October 9, 2026, when Starting With, All and Exact Match were each tried on the words Four and Oaks.
Set to Starting With, a search for Four Oaks returned 111 records. With All selected and the words entered in reverse, as Oaks Four, it returned 152. That list included names in which Four Oaks follows other words, such as Auto Parts of Four Oaks, Inc., although the words had been typed the other way round.
Open full size
The block above the rows describes the search: the number of records found, the Words setting, the text entered and the time. Keep that block with your notes, because a count means little without the setting that produced it.
Exact Match is the narrow setting. For Four Oaks it returned two records, Four Oaks, Inc. and Four Oaks, LLC, so it looked past the ending and the comma.
A search that matches nothing returns the same block with Records Found: 0 and no other message. Run All before you read a zero as an empty registry.
What North Carolina disregards when it compares two names
An LLC name must be distinguishable, upon the records of the Secretary of State, from the other entity names on the registry and from names that are reserved or registered. That standard is in N.C.G.S. § 55D-21.
A rule of the Business Registration Division, 18 NCAC 04 .0503, says what is left out of that comparison. Paragraph (a) deals with the ending, which the rule calls a designation of entity. Words such as company, co., limited, ltd., corporation, corp., incorporated, inc., limited liability company and L.L.C. are disregarded when they close the name, and counted when they sit in the body of the name.
Paragraph (b) deals with smaller parts. Articles, conjunctions, prepositions, punctuation and spaces are disregarded, and so is an Arabic numeral used in place of a word.
The search did not make that last substitution. The Starting With search that returned 111 records for Four Oaks returned 4 for 4 Oaks, and a different list.
Open full size
A candidate with a numeral in it therefore needs two searches, one with the digit and one with the word. Of the parts in paragraph (b), only the numeral was searched in both forms that day. If your candidate has an article, a preposition or punctuation, search it with and without, and compare what comes back.
Exact Match found Four Oaks, Inc. and Four Oaks, LLC both on the registry. The rule, though, is written for a proposed name, the one being filed now, and under it a different ending does not separate yours from a record already there. The result list does not explain how two older records came to share their wording.
The name you file must itself contain limited liability company, L.L.C. or LLC, or one of three longer forms: ltd. liability co., limited liability co. or ltd. liability company (§ 55D-20(a)).
Two more limits come from the Secretary of State’s Selecting a Name page. A name may not state or imply a purpose other than a lawful one that the company’s formation documents permit, and it may not contain words offensive to accepted standards of decency.
Open a row to see why it matched and what it is
Each row in the result list has two lines: the name with its Secretary of State ID number (SOSID), then a status and an entity type. Corporations, LLCs and nonprofit corporations appear together, and all of them are entity names for the § 55D-21 comparison.
A plus sign at the end of the row opens a panel with Legal name, Prev Legal name where there is one, Sosid, Date formed, Status, Citizenship and Business type.
That panel explained one row in the Four Oaks list that looked out of place. COMMUNITIES IN SCHOOLS OF FOUR OAKS, INC. does not begin with the search words, and the closed row gave no reason for it to be there. Opened, it showed a previous legal name that does begin with them.
Open full size
A row you cannot explain is worth opening. If a previous legal name is close to your candidate, take the question to the Business Registration Division, because nothing on the result page answers it.
Another row in the same list had no ID number. Four Oaks Area Ministries, Inc. was marked In Process, a status the Secretary of State’s Entity Status page gives to a creation filing that has been received and is being examined. Its panel had no Sosid line and no Date formed line. A dissolved nonprofit with the identical name sat directly below.
Open full size
So a filing can appear in the result list before it has a number, while it is still being examined.
Two other statuses defined on the Entity Status page describe names with no company behind them. Reserved Name is a name reserved on the registry that is not an entity of record. Expired is a reserved or registered name whose period has ended.
The page says it covers the most common statuses. Four statuses in the Four Oaks capture in the first section have no definition there: “Multiple,” “Admin. Dissolved,” “Dissolved” and “Current - Active.” The definitions it does give say when a status is used, not whether the name is free. That question is decided on a filing: under 18 NCAC 04 .0501, the Secretary of State may reject a document that confers a name it finds contrary to law.
Assumed names are in a second search
Below the Search button is a link, Search for Assumed Names, that opens a different tool. An assumed business name, the kind often called a DBA, is not kept with entity names in North Carolina.
The Secretary of State’s Assumed Business Names page says those names are filed with the county registers of deeds, and that its statewide database holds filings made on or after December 1, 2017.
Assumed names are outside the § 55D-21 comparison, which measures an LLC name against entity names and reserved or registered names. They still come first on the agency’s own list of ways to check a name. Its Feasibility of Name page starts with the register of deeds in your county and the counties around it. It then names the online search, the restricted words listed on the same page, local business directories, and trademark registrations, federal and North Carolina. The page leaves the choice of steps to you.
Form BE-03 holds one name, and the 120 days start on the filing date
Form BE-03, the Application to Reserve a Business Entity Name, asks for the name and for the applicant’s name and address. It reserves the name for a nonrenewable period of 120 days from the date the application is filed.
How those days are counted is in the Division’s rule on reservations, 18 NCAC 04 .0307. The filing date is the first day, and the reservation expires when the Division stops taking filings on the final day, even when that day is not one of its operating days. A second name needs a second application.
On October 9, 2026, the official pages gave two fees. Form BE-03 and the Business Entities Common forms list said $30. The Limited Liability Companies section of the fee schedule listed Application for Reserved Name at $10.00. Ask the Business Registration Division which amount applies before you pay.
To pass a reservation on, its holder files Form BE-04, Notice of Transfer of Reserved Business Entity Name, which the forms list prices at $10.00. That list offers BE-03 as a PDF and through online filing.
The Secretary of State’s Putting the Name Into Use page says that filing the formation document registers the name and means it is acceptable under North Carolina’s registration laws. The page adds that this does not guarantee the name’s use will go unchallenged, and it recommends waiting for the final papers before spending on printed items such as checks, stationery and signs.
Official North Carolina references
- Secretary of State business search and assumed-name search: form, result list and opened rows observed and captured October 9, 2026. The assumed-name search was not run.
- 18 NCAC 04, rules .0307, .0501 and .0503: reservation counting, rejection of a filing and what the name comparison disregards.
- Entity Status frequently asked questions: definitions of In Process, Reserved Name and Expired.
- Selecting a Name, Feasibility of Name and Putting the Name Into Use: the agency’s naming limits, its list of checks and its caution about printed items.
- Assumed Business Names: where assumed names are filed and what the statewide database covers.
- Form BE-03, the Business Entities Common forms list and the fee schedule: reservation terms, transfer form and the two fee figures. All of the pages above were read October 9, 2026.
- N.C.G.S. § 55D-20 and § 55D-21: required LLC wording and the distinguishability standard, as checked September 4, 2026.