What is a rename in NACE Rev. 2.1?

A rename in NACE Rev. 2.1 is a change to the title of a category whose content stays the same, or stays substantially the same, in the explanatory notes. The identifier may stay the same or change, but the test of a rename is the note, not the title alone. If the note for the new heading covers the same activities, with the same inclusions and exclusions, the change is a change of wording. If the note adds or removes activities, the change is a restructure, even when the title looks similar. Titles are short labels.

Notes carry the meaning, and a reader who compares titles only can mistake a restructure for a rename, or a rename for a restructure.

How is a rename different from a restructure?

A rename updates language. Wording can be modernised, shortened, or aligned with the wording used in a related classification, while the activities inside the heading stay where they were. A restructure moves activities. It adds activities from another heading, removes activities to another heading, or divides a heading. The correspondence table is the first place where the difference shows. A rename with an unchanged identifier may have no correspondence row at all, because no activity moves. A rename with a changed identifier appears as a one to one row, with one old heading pointing to one new heading. A restructure appears as a one to many, many to one, or many to many row. The row shape is therefore a useful first signal, but the note is the deciding document in every case.

Change	Identifier	Explanatory note	Correspondence row
Title only	Same	Same content	Often no row
Title and identifier	Changed	Same content	One to one row
Restructure	Same or changed	Content added or removed	Split, merge or rearranged row
New heading	New	New content	No Rev. 2 source, or drawn from several headings

The table above describes change types in general terms. It does not assert that any particular code underwent a particular type of change. Each heading must be checked in the table and the note for that heading. General patterns help a reader know what to look for. They do not replace the check for the heading in question.

Why do titles change at all?

Titles change because language in the economy changes, because a heading must match the wording of the explanatory note, and because headings at different levels must read consistently with each other. Eurostat states that NACE Rev. 2.1 introduces new concepts at all levels and restructures a number of existing headings, while maintaining the structure where no change was explicitly required. A title that no longer describes the activities in its note is a standing source of error in datasets, because users copy titles into tables, forms and search fields. Updating the title reduces that error. It does not, by itself, change any statistical series, any register entry, or any obligation. The series and the entry follow the content of the heading and the rules of the body that publishes them.

What should a reader do with a renamed heading?

A reader who meets a new title in a dataset should first check whether the identifier changed. If the identifier is unchanged and the note is unchanged, the heading is the same heading under a new label, and older and newer tables can be read together with care. If the identifier changed, the reader should find the correspondence row and confirm the one to one link before joining series across the change. If the note changed, the reader should treat the heading as restructured and check inclusions and exclusions line by line. In all three cases, the entry for a specific business is confirmed with the national statistical institute or the business register that holds the record. A title change never determines a reader’s code, and it never decides tax, licensing, funding or collective agreement matters.

Where is a rename recorded?

A rename is recorded in the published structure of NACE Rev. 2.1, set by Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/137 of 10 October 2022 (FIXED), which entered into force on 9 February 2023 (FIXED). The structure, the explanatory notes and the correspondence tables together form the record. The manual published by Eurostat, product code KS-GQ-24-007, brings the introductory guidelines and the explanatory notes together. A reader who can find the same content under a new title in that manual has found the rename. A reader who cannot find the same content has found something else, and should read the row as a restructure until the note proves otherwise.

Titles change so that labels match content, and the note, the table row and the institute record together show whether anything more than the label moved.