One residential community is named as Champs Elysees after the Champs Elysees Avenue in France. [File Photo: Weibo]

The practices of naming residential communities after foreign localities and individuals or changing a long-existing name of a place with no proper reason will soon be banned as China is beefing up its efforts to protect its cultural heritage.

The work to protect local toponyms, initiated by the State Council and the Ministry of Civil Affairs, is now underway across China.

This comes as the trend in recent years of naming residential communities, roads, bridges and parks with some grand, foreign or strange names,like Manhattan, Venice and Champs Elysees by local authorities increases.

This may easily lead to repetition and cause troubles for people to trace and remember.

Worst of all, most of the original names of some places that have rich contents of history and culture were also changed.

According to statistics of the Ministry of Civil Affairs, with the adjustments in local districts, the names of some 60,000 towns and some 400,000 villages were discarded.

As the head of the Ministry of Civil Affairs of China pointed out that the names of local places in China are carriers of Chinese civilization and must be well protected.

The work is scheduled to be completed in March next year by which time a mechanism of naming local places will be established in order to prevent the practice of inappropriate naming and better protect the culture of toponyms.