The Shanghai City government will rename 339 streets across the city to remove confusion caused by duplicate names.

So far, the government has renamed several streets in the city's Yangpu, Baoshan and Jiading districts.

Officials said the government hopes all repeated names will be changed by the end of next year.

Liu Bo, deputy director of the city's place naming office, said yesterday that the task of renaming streets was far from easy, as door plates have to be replaced, ID cards updated, and related government documents replaced.

The city has many duplicate road names because suburban districts were allowed to choose the name of streets until 1999, according to the place naming office.

Some road names, such as "zhongshan" and "renmin," were particularly popular.

There are 10 Yucai Roads and 10 Beijie Streets throughout the city.

This continues to cause people, especially non-locals, to struggle when searching for an address.

Chen Youhua, a senior engineer of Shanghai Urban Planning Administrative Bureau, warned the task of changing the street names would not be an easy one for the government.

"Normally, people don't prefer to change their door plates because it will cause a lot of inconvenience," he said.

The bureau has launched a Website in pinyin and Chinese characters -- smi.stn.sh.cn/dmb -- to help visitors pinpoint roads with the same name.

Usually an east-west street is named with a city name while a south-north street is named with a provincial name.

(Shanghai Daily October 15, 2004)