What's in a Name?

4 Sep 2010 - Two hundred people sharing the surname Shan in a village in Shandong province have been forced by China's unbending bureaucracy to change their family name as the character is so rare it cannot be typed. So far, they had no problem when identity cards, driving licenses and other documents could be handwritten, but now they have to be printed using computers. Their name is so unusual that it does not exist in word processing programmes. "Nobody wants to do it, but under the circumstances we have no chance," villager Xian Xuexin (new name) told state television, using a new, easy to type family name. People may ask "What's in a name?", but your name is part of your identity.