Now it seems it will be, albeit not equally across the board.

Reports suggest that Shanghai Shenhua will be allowed to keep the Shenhua part of the name. It means “flower of Shanghai”.

That’s fine, with the huge glaring oversight that Shenhua was also the name of the long-forgotten original sponsors.

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It had been assumed that Shanghai Shenhua and Beijing Guoan – the old ladies of Chinese football, to borrow the nickname of Italian giants Juventus – would both be allowed to keep their names, meeting “neutrality” requirements on account of their long-standing.

Apparently not. Guoan (“national security”) stems from owners Citic, though it is open to debate whether the club or the supermarket is the better known.

There is likely to be acceptance by the fans in Beijing, though. When the club decided to go to war with Nike and make their own merchandise, much of it was branded as Beijing FC, a name that the club already uses officially in the AFC Champions League.

Acceptance is not forthcoming for other fans, though. Tianjin Teda fans – the Teda in question is the Tianjin Economic Development Area – are furious that they will have to change their name and club crest, which has been in place since 1998.

Up and down the league there will have to be changes, from new champions Jiangsu Suning to newly promoted Changchun Yatai.

Since Dalian Wanda in 1994, the formula for naming football clubs in China has overwhelmingly been the name of the city and the name of the owners. That formula has stood firm, despite clubs changing hands and hometowns.

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Guangzhou Evergrande – or Guangzhou Evergrande Taobao FC to give them their full name – were the disgraced Guangzhou Pharmaceutical until 2010 when Xu Jiayin came calling.

City rivals R&F were Shenzhen Phoenix until 2011 when they were saved and relocated. There were several iterations in Shenzhen, all of them company names, since they were founded as Shenyang.

Dalian, funded by Wanda Group’s Wang Jianlin, bit the bullet early. In January, their Chinese name changed from Dalian Yifang to Dalian Ren (“people”) in Chinese and they go by Dalian Pro in English.

Wang was also ahead of the curve when it came to Chinese ownership of foreign clubs, selling his stake in Atletico Madrid in 2018.

That came ahead of his return to Chinese football ownership. His Dalian Wanda side were dominant in the early days of professional football in the 1990s, while Wanda were also the title sponsors of the league before pulling out after corruption scandals tarnished the domestic game.

Wang returned with interest in recent years, setting up the Wanda Cup in 2017 to give the national team better opposition and then taking over in Dalian.

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This Chinese Football Association ruling cannot be too detached from the change in government policy regarding football. Clubs – and their owners – are no longer encouraged to throw money at big name foreign signings and vast wage bills.

Instead, there has been a move toward austerity and self-sufficiency, as evidenced by salary caps. It seems the names will be similarly spartan: we are going to see Guangzhou FC take on Beijing FC.

The question is what the new change will mean, apart from club names as uninspired as the new arrivals to the CSL are uninspiring.

Why would a company want to invest without the name recognition that has so long gone with that?

We might well see money drop out of the CSL because of that so what is the priority?

Company names do not seem to be an issue for K-League sides Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors or Suwon Samsung Bluewings.

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Neutral names are the ideal but there are bigger issues now – not least how easily and often clubs move around the country.

Sure, it is annoying that they change their name with each new owner – and the reasons for the clubs changing hands can be even more frustrating – but it is nothing compared to moving thousands of kilometres. That needs to be stopped more than company names, especially the older ones.

It is hard to see a short-term positive for changing names. Angering the fans who have stood by clubs for years risks alienating support bases, while companies pulling out could be disastrous.

As well-meaning as this might be in the long term, it’s not going to improve anything on or off the pitch and surely that is the name of the game?