Similarly, it is quite rare to see Chinese children bear the same name as their fathers – the closest examples typically include small differences, such as the former Premier Li Peng's son, who is named Li Xiaopeng.
This tradition has largely fallen into abeyance since the Communist victory in the Civil War; the "Ze" (泽) in Mao Zedong was the fourteenth generation of such a cycle, but he chose to ignore his family's generational poem to name his own sons.
For example, as part of the class entering the National Drama School in 1933, Li Yuru adopted a name with the central character "jade" (玉).
It is also common to split modern Chinese words – which now usually consist of two characters of similar meaning both to each other and the full word – among a pair of children, such as Jiankang (健康, "healthy") appearing in the children's names as -jian (健, "strong") and -kang (康, "healthy").
For example, many Chinese born during the Cultural Revolution have "revolutionary names" such as Qiangguo (强国, lit.
It is considered rude for a child to refer to parents by their given name, and this taboo is extended to all adult relatives.
When speaking of non-family social acquaintances, people are generally referred to by a title – for example, "Mister Zhang", "Mother Li" or "Chu's Wife".
In regions where fortune-telling is more popular, many parents may name their children on the advice of literomancers.
The advice are often given based on the number of strokes of the names or the perceived elemental value of the characters in relation to the child's birth time and personal elemental value; rarely on the sound of the name as there is no system of fortune-telling based on character pronunciations.