How to Name Your Baby? In China, Carefully

Perhaps too poor to donate to the construction of sports facilities for the Asian Games here, a village in eastern China named 21 new babies “Asian Games” instead.

Choosing the right name for a baby is tough anywhere, but in China, which promotes a strict one-child family birth control policy, the decision is often fraught with political implications.

Forty-one years of Communist propaganda persuaded many prudent Chinese families to select names for their children which reflect the political climate at the time.

Socialist upheavals since the 1949 revolution that brought the Communist Party to power have spawned a living chronology of the nation’s tendencies, often violent.

In 1949, China’s newborn were truly revolutionaries--a generation with names like “Nation Builders,” “Liberators” and “Great Celebrations.”

A year later, the honeymoon period was cut short by the Korean War. An increasing sense of isolation and outside threat was reflected in names like “Motherland,” “Patriot” and a combination of expressions calling for the defense of China against capitalist intervention.

“Anti-imperialist” became a common choice, but by 1957 the emphasis was moving away from the threat of foreign aggression toward domestic struggles.

The enforced revolutionary zeal of the disastrous Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s, when Chinese were encouraged to hand in their metal pots and pans as raw material for industry, prompted some parents to choose names for their children like “Steel.”

“Anti-Revisionist” became a trend-setter in those years.

Propaganda through parenthood reached its height during the fanatical Cultural Revolution. The “10 years of chaos” inspired by the late Chairman Mao Tse-tung from 1966 to 1976 left a generation saddled with the slogans of an era that is now denounced.

“Rebellion,” “Revolution” and a mass of “Red” images became the order of the day. As political fortunes reversed, however, some names risked becoming a political liability.

But with the death of Mao in 1976 and a harsh awakening to the horrors they had endured, Chinese families began to turn back to tradition to name their offspring.

Although 1978 saw the birth of several “Reforms”--in honor of the capitalist-style changes wrought by senior leader Deng Xiaoping that year--the last decade saw the return of names originating in rare flowers and natural beauties rather than political trends.

These days, single Chinese character names such as “Wind,” “Sun” and “Rain” are especially popular among new parents. They dote upon their only child to such a degree that the Chinese media have given the spoiled young generation a further nickname--”little emperors.”