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

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….

The bureau has launched a Website in pinyin and Chinese characters 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.

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