An orphanage in Wuhu, in eastern China's Anhui province in Aug.
2009. Institutions in China that care for orphans will no longer
be allowed to name children in their care in ways that signal
their parentless status, a government ministry said this week,
according to a report in the state-controlled China Daily. The
Ministry of Civil Affairs plans to issue new regulations set of
rules to prohibit orphanages from using naming conventions that
make it easy for other Chinese speakers to guess that an
individual is an orphan—leading to lifelong stigma. The article
explains that some institutions named children in their care for
where they were abandoned. Others gave children the surname
“Guo” or “Dang”— to indicate the child was in care of the
“State” or “Party.” "We don't want children who grow up in
orphanages to carry labels that imply they are different from
those who have parents," Chen Luann, a children's welfare worker
told the newspaper. The new regulations will require that
orphans be given surnames chose