legalsuffix

Detect, normalize, and strip legal entity suffixes (LLC, LTD, GmbH, OOO, 株式会社…) in 20+ languages. Parse company names safely.

Operations

The package exposes these operations from legalsuffix. Country and language filters are optional; country codes use ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 and language codes use ISO 639-1 two-letter codes.

from legalsuffix import (
    get_suffixes,
    match_legal_suffix,
    normalize_legal_suffix,
    parse_company_name,
    strip_legal_suffix,
)

Get suffix records

get_suffixes returns LegalSuffix records. Filters are optional.

suffixes = get_suffixes(country_code="DE", language_code="de")
for suffix in suffixes[:5]:
    print(suffix.elf_code, suffix.entity_legal_form_name_local_name)

Match a suffix

match_legal_suffix finds a legal form in the company name. Some registry names place the legal form before additional descriptive text. It returns None if there is no match. The end offset is exclusive.

company = "Musterfirma GmbH"
match = match_legal_suffix(company, country_code="DE")
if match is not None:
    print(match.suffix)  # "GmbH"
    print(match.start_pos, match.end_pos)  # 12 16
    print(match.records[0].elf_code)  # ELF code for this legal form

Normalize a suffix

Normalization trims surrounding whitespace, ignores punctuation and accents, and lowercases the suffix.

normalize_legal_suffix(" GmbH. ")  # "gmbh"

Parse a company name

parse_company_name returns the company name with the matched legal form removed, along with the optional suffix match. Text after the form is preserved.

parsed = parse_company_name("Musterfirma GmbH", country_code="DE")
print(parsed.name)  # "Musterfirma"
if parsed.suffix is not None:
    print(parsed.suffix.suffix)  # "GmbH"

Strip a suffix

strip_legal_suffix removes the recognized legal form and preserves any text that follows it.

strip_legal_suffix("Musterfirma GmbH", country_code="DE")  # "Musterfirma"

Country codes use ISO 3166-1 alpha-2, and language codes use ISO 639-1 two-letter codes.

Development hooks

Install the pre-commit hook to run the unit tests and refresh the coverage badge before a commit that changes a Python file under src/:

uv run pre-commit install

If the badge changes, stage README.md and retry the commit so the updated coverage is included.

Data Source

ISO 20275: Entity Legal Forms Code List: Entity Legal Forms Code List (Version 1.6 )