The Chinese government is working to limit the use of foreign names for roads, bridges and residential compounds, an effort that authorities say is meant to protect the country's cultural heritage.

In a meeting on Tuesday in Beijing, Civil Affairs Minister Li Liguo called for the use of geographic names that better reflect China's culture, history and traditions.

The decision to preserve traditional names was made following the launch of a State Council place names survey in 2014. The survey found some 60,000 county and township names and over 400,000 village names had been abandoned since 1986, and some had been replaced by foreign names such as "Manhattan" or "Provence."

According to Li, the first slew of names to be changed will be those that cause damage to sovereignty or national dignity, those that are at odds with socialist core values, those deemed immoral, and those that have attracted the greatest number of public complaints.

Places with misleading or exaggerated names,  or whose names establish tenuous links to historical figures or celebrities - such as the "hometown of Ximen Qing," a fictional infamous seducer - will all be told to rebrand themselves, Li said.

The State Council released a circular in February ordering local governments to correct non-standard names that meet such criteria.

"Cities in China have been losing their identity, history and cultural heritage, which causes confusion," Yu Kongjian, professor of urban planning at Peking University, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

Yu explained that the phenomenon shows that Chinese society is at a stage where people are not confident about their own culture.

"This act rectifies the previous chaotic naming of geographic landmarks, and it will help save disappearing cultural landscapes and old cities in China," Yu said.

Xinhua contributed to this story