(FORTUNE Magazine) – Company name changing picked up last year, according to Anspach Grossman Portugal, a corporate-identity consulting firm that keeps track of such things. But there's still work to be done. As the table shows, the name's the same with a lot of multinationals. North Carolina fabric maker Burlington Industries Equity -- which itself has changed names four times within the past four years -- had to go to court to differentiate itself from Burlington Coat Factory Warehouse, a discount- apparel vendor headquartered in New Jersey. The coat people now run a disclaimer in TV ads. Other companies share names -- and nothing else. Dow Chemical's founder, Herbert Henry Dow, is no kin to the Charles H. Dow who helped create Dow Jones. And the Quakers in our table are unrelated -- there is no alchemical Quaker who could turn oats into motor oil.

Some of 1992's name changers, like Snapple Beverage and Sprint (formerly Unadulterated Food Products and United Telecommunications), did so to emphasize well-known brand names. But overall the name game is likely to get even muddier. Says Leonard R.N. Ashley, an English professor at Brooklyn College who has followed corporate naming practices for two decades: ''It used to be that a company would be named for its owner, back when King Gillette would have his signature on every package of razor blades. But now anonymous names like TRW are better for companies in lots of different businesses.'' -- R.T.

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