Limitation of there be only ONE supplier per NAME

Good day,

I am not sure if this the right community but here goes.

We are looking at TCA and its use for us.  Part of the problem is that all information indicates and that you cannot have two suppliers exist as AP_SUPPLIERS with exactly the same name.   Is this an AP restriction only or does that come down from the TCA linking?

Due to our 'business' we do have many suppliers with exact same names, but they are not the same.  Currently we use '*'s to make each unique, but that becomes a problem when that same supplier is a customer and so we end up with many duplicate party records.  As well it becomes a bit wild when you have a lot of *** included in the name field.