Also Known As. Using an assumed name seems to be the thing to do for movie stars and criminals on the run, but they are also an important part of incorporation. Why? Because the fictitious name is a feature of State Corporation laws that allow a corporation to operate under more than one name.
Why would a corporation or a company need fictitious names? Well, while not getting into such large and diverse corporations like GMAC, imagine the small business owner. Perhaps they handle multiple products from different vendors or have consultant relationships with different vendors – rather than having several corporations for each subset of his or her business, they can use the fictitious name to work from one incorporation
The majority of people are going to incorporate in their state using a variation of their last name like Long Services or Long, Inc. They can then use their fictitious names to be more descriptive about their products. For example, Long Household Cleaning Supplies or Long Creative Development or Long Web Services would all just be registered alias of Long, Inc. One incorporation with several incarnations, but only one set of books to maintain. The fact that it appears complicated is the genius of the alias or also known as or fictitious names rules, because appearances in this case are very deceiving. Fictitious names simplify the matter.