Parents in China want to help their children to stand out from the beginning by giving them a unique and beautiful name.

Though China is rapidly becoming international, the people are still working hard to preserve centuries-old traditions, one of which is carefully naming their offspring.

"A person's name is not only identification, but a way of expressing aspirations and expectations," said Zhang Shuyan, senior researcher at the State Committee for Reforming Chinese Written Language.

"When parents choose a name for their children, they are apt to associate it with some enjoyable and memorable object or incident," he said.

But parents are facing increased chances of having their children's names identical to many others as more and more people have one-character given names instead of two.

For instance, more than 2,000 women are named "Meili" - "beautiful" - in Xiamen, a special economic zone in Fujian Province.

Moreover, a growing number of people with the same surname increases the number of namesakes in China, where 270 million of its 1.3 billion population are named Li, Wang or Zhang, making up 7.9 percent, 7.4 percent and 7.1 percent of the total population, respectively.

Linguistic scholars suggest using a two-character given name to reduce the number of people with identical names.

But some parents prefer rare words when choosing a name, a way through which ancient royal families preserved their dignity and nobility.

Parents believe that such unique names consisting of rare words will give their children access to a unique personality, or even a logo of sorts in a sometimes impersonal society.

They hold that a wide-range selection from up to 80,000 Chinese characters will easily enable them to pick an exclusive name for their children.

Linguists recommend caution, however, saying that such creativity is fine, but the strategy can backfire when they open a bank account, register for an identity card and apply for a driver license.

Most such rare characters are not included in the current computer database of Chinese characters, and cannot be printed correctly.

To tackle the problem, China is planning to compile a list of some 12,000 characters of standard words and given names to regulate the use of characters as names.

Chinese place much greater stock in the meaning of names than most Westerners.

Many foreign words are assimilated into Chinese names. America is "Meiguo" or "beautiful country."

During the 1950s and '60s, political awareness produced children with given names like "Jianguo," "Jiefang" and "Aijun" - "build the nation," "liberation" and "love the army."

A person's name in the Chinese is not just his or her individual identity but also reflects the social changes of the times.

This is particularly true of Chinese names, as the given names are chosen and selected from among ordinary words for their meanings, not from a list of first names that evolved over the years, as in Western nations.

The six most common ones are "Ying" (hero or flower), "Hua" (flower or China), "Yu" (jade), "Xiu" (elegant), "Ming" (bright) and "Zhen" (treasure).

In the past, a vast number of country children were named "Xiaozhu" (piglet) or "Xiaogou" (puppy) because the farmers were very poor and hoped that they could bring up their children as easily as raising pigs and dogs.

(eastday.com June 21, 2003)