Many old neighborhoods in Shanghai feature plenty of narrow, tranquil, tree-lined streets with European-style architecture, Gao’an Road not least among them.

The road built in 1914 was initially known as Gao’en Road, named after Ghosn, a French lieutenant killed in the First World War.

Renamed Gao’an Road in 1943 after a city in Jiangxi Province close to the capital Nanchang, the new name followed the principal of road-naming in Shanghai that has been in place since the 1940s, with most streets named after other cities, counties and provincial areas.

Shanghai, opened as a port city in 1843 during the reign of Emperor Daoguang in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), is now an international metropolis which attracts people from all over the world as both visitors and residents.

Before the city was liberated in 1949, roads were mostly named after overseas places or personalities, such as Avenue Eduard VII (today’s Yan’an Road E.), Avenue Haig (Huashan Road), Avenue Joffre (Huaihai Road), Avenue Petain (Hengshan Road), Route des Soeurs (Ruijin No.1 Road) and Rue Massenet (Sinan Road).

There were some exceptions, especially major thoroughfares. Today’s Beijing Road E. was once Consulate Road. The part of Nanjing Road W. from Jing’an Temple to People’s Square was known as Bubbling Well Road (Yongquan Road) until 1945.

There were also old Shanghainese names, with Nanjing Road generally known as Main Road in its early days.

These road names with their echoes of colonialism were widely considered to denigrate the dignity of the country. When the city was liberated, almost all the old names were changed.

Those named after Western ideas were changed to the names of Chinese provinces and cities, most of which are still used.

Roads running north-south are named after provinces. These include Jiangxi Road, Shanxi Road and Zhejiang Road. One notable exception is Guangdong Road, which runs east-west.

Roads running east-west are named after cities, and include such well-known landmarks as Beijing Road, Fuzhou Road and Nanjing Road.

Two exceptions to this rule are Chengdu Road and Chongqing Road, both running north-south.

“This principle was actually initiated as early as 1865, and from 1943 until 1945 all of Shanghai’s streets experienced a big geographical and linguistic shake-up following a strict principal of naming after provinces and cities,” according to Xue Liyong, vice-chairman of the Shanghai Road Name Association and scholar of Shanghai history.

The location of each street is related to the geographical positions of the actual provinces and cities themselves.

Roads in Xuhui District in the south of the city are related to the cities of Guangxi province, like Guilin Road, Liuzhou Road and Tianlin Road, as the province is located in the south of China. Changning District in the southwest of the city has names based on places in Guizhou Province likewise located in southwest China.

Putuo District’s roads take their names from Shanxi Province in the north, such as Luochuan Road, Tongchuan Road and Zhidan Road.

The names of cities in Heilongjiang Province, the most northeast province, are mostly used in the city’s northeastern districts of Hongkou and Yangpu.

One province is conspicuous by its absence. There is no Anhui Road in Shanghai and never has been, so the story goes, a peculiarity sometimes thought to be explained by the activities of “the Huai troop.”

The Huai troop, composed of soldiers from Anhui Province, entered the city under the leadership of Li Hongzhang, a minister of the late Qing Dynasty, and brutally suppressed a revolt by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

“From this rumor, we might think that road names in Shanghai follow the ideas of residents, but actually it’s not that simple,” said Xue.

Xue calls it the “cold-shoulder theory,” and thinks it is an urban myth.

There are several roads named after cities in Anhui Province, such as Anqing Road and Hefei Road.

The history of naming roads in the city is also too circuitous for any simple prejudice to have a long-lasting effect.

“Some government or other has always been the authority to name roads in the city. It seems to have had very little to do with the preferences of the public,” noted Xue.

In fact, there used to be an Anhui Road, albeit a very short-lived one, between 1943 and 1945.

“Compared with other roads named after provincial areas such as Xizang Road and Henan Road, Anhui Road seems to have been something of a flash in the pan,” said Wu Zhiwei, a former researcher with Shanghai History Museum.

According to a municipal report released in 1945, Anhui Road used to be Rue de Capitaine Rabier. It was combined with Ningxia Road and renamed Xizang Road S. as it remains today.

“According to several municipal reports and newspapers, the exact location of the former Anhui Road is the section that connects today’s Zhaozhou Road and Xizang Road,” Wu stated.

In order to reduce confusion, Anhui was never used as the name of any other road, as there was already an Aihui Road in Yangpu District, pronounced in the Shanghai dialect in almost exactly the same way.

As the city keeps on growing, more streets are in need of naming.

With these new avenues and alleyways, many new principles of naming have emerged.

In Zhangjiang High-Tech Park in the Pudong New Area, the roads are all named after scientists, both Chinese and international, such as Huatuo, Cailun, Zhangheng, Zuchongzhi, Aidisheng (Edison), Gebaini (Copernicus) and Niudun (Newton).

Some new roads in Minhang District are named after plants: Baihehua (lily), Yinxing (ginkgo), Ziteng (wisteria) and Ziwei (crepe myrtle).

In the Gubei area of Changning District, the newest roads are named after precious stones, like Hongbaoshi (ruby), Lanbaoshi (sapphire) and Manao (agate).

Although the names of roads are still finally settled on by the government, people’s feedback is much more respected today.

There used to be two roads in Beixinjing area, Changning District, known as Qianxi Road and Chishui Road, both innocently named after counties in Guizhou Province.

However, the pronunciation of “Qianxi” is similar to “finding death” in the Shanghai dialect. Similarly “Chishui” sounds like “pee.” No one wants to live on a street named “pee,” do they?

After the official naming of the roads, the public feedback, a combination of anger and mockery, was hard to ignore and the road naming office finally canceled the original names and came up with more mellifluous choices of Suining Road and Jinzhong Road.

Once the road’s name is changed, any citizens or companies registered there have to go through a torturous process of changing all their basic information with all official departments.

“Setting the name of a road is a very serious process, following official principles. It should be stable, and connected with the lives of the people who use the street,” Xue said.