[PowerBar]

I think you've touched on two separate issues. The first is with human interactions with the businesses (firefighters finding the building), the second is dealing with official paperwork and interactions (filing for the license, etc).

The former has various solutions depending on the situation (ex: numbered street addresses, logos, internationalized names, etc).

The later, and one the article is dealing with, is mostly solved by the fact that all business licenses (at least in BC) have a unique "business number" assigned by the city in which you acquire your license. Other than the initial data entry of the name and it being displayed reasonably on forms, any need to identify the business during an interaction can fall back to the business number if the representative does not know how to pronounce, spell or type the name. In fact, I suspect most government employees just type the business number in anyway because it's fast, easy and doesn't involve trying to spell whatever post-modern spelling they used to get an available domain name.