WHEREVER a road is built, it will be given an appropriate name, endowing it with a certain geographic or cultural significance.

Usually, roads last a long time and over the years become part of the maturation of a city.

As China's first major metropolis, Shanghai has had the greatest number of roads and the most diversified road names.

During the feudal era, most road names came from local family surnames and from the names of shops or buildings along the roads. The names contained distinctive local characteristics as people at that time lived together in clans and the businesses they were engaged in were of prime importance.

In 1843 when Shanghai was opened to the West, the names of Shanghai's roads underwent a radical change due to the establishment of the foreign settlements. Wide and well-made roads were built one after another and the new roads needed new names.

At first, the roads in the foreign settlements were given names at random. Where a church was located, the road was called Jiaotang Jie (Church Road) and if there was a garden along the road, it was called Huayuan Long (Garden Road).

However, as more and more new roads were built, this form of road naming caused some difficulty for people.

In the 1860s, the British and French authorities had to make adjustments to the old road names and decided that in the British settlement, north-south roads were to be named after China's provinces and the east-west roads after China's cities or harbours.

This established a unique approach to road naming by selecting place names from China's vast hinterland. It also embodied the metropolitan spirit of Shanghai and was accepted by the public.

Yet this way of road naming was not always used in the foreign settlements, with Europeans and Americans also following their own traditions, naming roads after famous persons and those who had played an important role in the life of Shanghai.

In the foreign settlements, more than half the roads were named after various Western personalities and only a few after Chinese - usually those who had a deep relationship with the foreign authorities.

Western control over their settlements in Shanghai finally came to an end with the "War of Resistance against Japan". Supported initially by the Japanese, the puppet government under Wang Jingwei took over the settlements of Britain and France.

Because of a strong resistance to Western influence, the puppet government got rid of all the Western names and changed the road names to Chinese ones.

Although what the puppet government had aimed to do in changing the road names was to diminish British, French and US influence in Shanghai, the idea stuck.

From that time on, road names stemming from Chinese place names became the practice in Shanghai and this way of road naming was firmly established.

(The author is from the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences)