Report · One-off

What Latvian Companies Call Themselves

Of the limited companies registered in Latvia in 2025, 43.0% had an English word in their name and 16.3% a Latvian one. It was the other way round until the 2000s: from 1991 to 2001, 8.9% of new companies took an English name and 41.2% a Latvian one. English has been ahead every year since 2008, and the word new companies reach for most is Group.

How Is the Language of a Latvian Company Name Classified?

By its words, since the register records a name, not a language. A word counts as Latvian if it has a Latvian letter or the Latvian spelling dictionary accepts it, and as English if the English one does. On 100 names labelled by hand before the rule was run on them, the rule agreed on 88.

A word both dictionaries accept goes to the language that uses it more. A name is English if it has an English word and no Latvian one, Latvian the other way round, both if it has both, and neither if it has no word from either: invented names, initials, numbers, surnames and other languages.

Where the rule disagreed it mostly read an English name as both or neither (8 of the 47 English names), so the English shares below are, if anything, a little low. The register keeps the names of companies that have closed, so every year counts every company registered, and a company that renamed is read under the name it registered with.

When Did English Overtake Latvian in Latvian Company Names?

In 2008. Through the 1990s, around one new company in eleven had an English name. The share moved in 2002, from 8.7% to 13.5%, and kept climbing, and by 2025 43.0% of new names had an English word against 16.3% with a Latvian one.

In 2008 English names passed Latvian ones, 29.3% to 25.8%. So far in 2026 it is 45.5% to 14.5%. Names with neither language fell too, from 51.0% in 1991 to 38.2% in 2025.

What Words Do Latvian Companies Put in Their Names?

Since 2015, 2,343 new companies have put Group in their name, 1,502 Baltic, 1,312 Solutions and 1,128 Latvia, the most used English words. The most used Latvian words name a trade: Serviss (956), Būve (749), Birojs (383), Prakse (347).

The last word of a name has its own fashions. Solutions ended 0.4% of new names in 2006 and 1.5% in 2025. Group peaked at 2.2% and was 1.9% in 2025. Naming a place in English, Baltic, Latvia or Riga, has become less common, from 3.7% of names in 2005 to 2.5% in 2025.

Are Latvian Company Names Getting Shorter?

No. Names have not got shorter, or stranger. In 2005, 38.6% of new names were a single word and 30.2% a single word from neither dictionary; in 2025 the figures were 42.9% and 30.7%. The median name was 9 characters long in both years. The invented brand name is a fixture, not a trend.

Do Foreign-Owned Companies in Latvia Choose English Names?

Among active companies registered since 2015 with their owners on record, those with no Latvian owner took an English name 53.5% of the time and a Latvian one 7.9%. Companies owned only by Latvians are different, but not the opposite: they chose English 39.1% of the time and Latvian 20.6%. The foreign ownership report has who the owners are.

Does a Company Name Have Anything to Do With Survival in Latvia?

A little, in one direction. Of the companies registered from 2015 to 2022, 90.9% of those with a Latvian name were still registered 36 months later, against 88.6% with an English name and 87.9% with neither. Latvian names were ahead in 8 of 8 yearly cohorts, by 0.7 to 4.1 points.

That is a difference between the companies, not an effect of the name. Latvian names are more common among some kinds of company, doctors’ practices for one, and less common among foreign-owned ones, and nothing here separates those differences from the name itself. The company survival report has survival for the register as a whole.

Do Latvian Companies Rename Themselves in English?

Renaming leans English. 7.0% of the companies registered since 2015 have changed their name, in the Register’s name history to 2 April 2025. Before the change, 45.7% of them had an English name and 18.4% a Latvian one; after it, 48.6% and 15.5%.

Do Startups in Latvia Have English Names?

52.4% of the 597 startups and scaleups on this map have an English word in their registered name, against 34.2% of every active company and 41.2% of those registered since 2015. Fewer than 20 have a Latvian name. 42.4% have a name from neither dictionary, against 39.1% of active companies.

What Can Latvian Company Name Data Not Tell You?

The name a company trades under, since this reads the registered name; words in other languages, which count as neither; why a founder chose a name; and exact shares, because the rule agrees with a person 88% of the time on names it had not seen.

• The name a company trades under. This is the registered name. A brand can differ from it.
• Other languages. Russian, German or Italian words written in Latin letters count as neither, with invented names, initials and surnames.
• Why a founder chose a name. An English word can be a bid for export, a habit of the industry or simply taste; the register records the choice, not the reason.
• Exact shares. The rule agrees with a person 88% of the time on names it had not seen, and the shares carry that uncertainty.

Method

• Words. The distinctive part of the name, without the legal form, split into words, with joined words split at their capitals. Tokens of one to three letters count as initials unless they are common short words such as and, the, un or uz. Forms both languages share, such as auto, taxi, pro and eco, count as neither.
• Dictionaries. LibreOffice’s Latvian and English spelling dictionaries decide whether a word exists; word counts from film subtitles decide a word both accept, and a long word neither accepts counts as English when it splits into two common English words.
• Checked. The rule was chosen on 200 hand-labelled names, where it agrees on 183, and scored once on 100 more labelled blind, where it agrees on 88. The compute re-scores both on every run and stops if the blind figure falls below 85%.
• Owners. Beneficial owner nationality; no name, identity code or birth date is read.
• Withheld figures. A count from 1 to 19 is shown as fewer than 20, and no share or median is published over fewer than 200 companies or where its count is withheld.

Definitions are frozen at version 4. The full set is on the methodology page.

Sources

• Uzņēmumu reģistrs open data, the company register, and its name history and beneficial owners. Extract of 4 September 2026.
• LibreOffice dictionaries, Latvian (LGPL) and English spelling dictionaries.
• FrequencyWords, word counts from OpenSubtitles 2018, Latvian and English (CC BY-SA 4.0).