Which function do i have to use for counting only the names in one column ?

Hello everyone!

Good morning! So, here is my question that i need your help.

1) Which function do i have to use to count names of, for example companies? i have for example the name of that companies: Seaways,SharkWays,MonkeyWays,Universe,etc I found that i can do that with pivot table or the function counta, although counta, count the number of cells in a range that are not empty .