I have discussed Confucius’s attention to naming things – how honest identification of a thing allows for action – several times on this blog.  But when I saw this story in today’s China Daily, I had to say "no, that is not what he was thinking:"

Students swap names to improve their luck
(Shanghai Daily)
Updated: 2006-02-20 10:14

A new semester has just
started for elementary and middle school students in the city of Shanghai, and
as always a number of parents are registering to change their children’s names
in the hope of changing their temper, bringing good luck, or improving grades.

Some parents say they hope a new name will help their children drop bad
habits, like addiction to the Internet.

One mother surnamed Shi renamed her son, a primary school student, Hengfu,
which means eternal happiness in Chinese.

Shi said she decided to change the boy’s name because he always did poorly in
school. Despite tutoring after school, he always earns mediocre marks in school,
she said.

Shi turned to a "name-giving master" to choose a lucky name for the boy.

"I hope the ‘special recipe’ could bring him good luck," the mother said.

Teachers in the city say a few students in every school change their names at
the start of every new semester, usually students who are nearing graduation.

 Confucius, and especially Mencius after him, argue that people must act from the inside out, from an internal conscience and sense of duty outward toward the external, daily expressions of those inner feelings and beliefs.  A mere external show of propriety is ethically insufficient.  One must cultivate the inner self, or internal sense of one’s place in the world, before one can understand moral behavior toward others.

     The impulse to change a person’s fate or behavior via an alteration of a name misses the Confucian point completely.  A name must be generated based upon the inherent character of a person or thing.  We cannot create that inherent character by simply wishing it into existence with a new name.  Instead, we must work to cultivate inner qualities which will then define what the name should be.