English-name lookup rates for Chinese manufacturers: 106 NHTSA vPIC registrants searched by their registered English names, 12 August 2026

Measured how often a Chinese manufacturer can be found in a Chinese company registry search when the only thing you hold is its English name. Buyers outside China rarely hold the Chinese registered name; they hold an English name from an email signature, a catalogue, or a platform storefront. Sample: 106 Chinese manufacturers registered with NHTSA vPIC in the United States. Their English names are on file with a federal authority, which makes this close to a best case rather than a typical one. Each was searched by its registered English name on 12 August 2026. Results: 57.5% of searches returned at least one candidate. For each return, the top candidate's own registration record was checked for whether it independently records the same English name; that held for 77.0% of them. End to end, 44.3% resolved to a company that independently confirms the English name searched. A separate figure of 83.6% covers candidates returned per search before confirmation. Paired comparison: 22 of the companies also carry a brand or short name. Searching the same companies both ways, the full registered English name returned a candidate 59.1% of the time and the brand or short name 90.9%. The higher rate is the worse result: most brand-name returns were a different company. A full registered English name encodes a place, a company style and an industry word at once; a brand name encodes only the style, and Chinese company styles repeat heavily across provinces and industries. Limits: one sector only (vehicle and trailer manufacturers), all of whom had a regulatory reason to record an English name with a US regulator, so 44.3% should be read as an upper bound rather than an average. The paired brand-name subset is 22 companies; the direction is clear but the exact percentages are not stable at that size. One search platform, one date. No personal data is included; the file contains company-level fields only. Full method and write-up: https://currawongweb.com/verify/english-name-lookup-study/