Street Renaming, Name Restoration, and Heritage-Making in Huifang: A Historic Hui Muslim Neighborhood in Xi’an

Historic districts are represented through overlapping boundaries because street names, communities, heritage areas, and tourism destinations organize space differently. Huifang, a historic Hui Muslim neighborhood in Xi’an shaped by intercultural contact, makes this tension visible. Huifang, Huimin Street, and their English forms denote overlapping but non-identical spaces. This article examines how official renaming and restoration changed its street network and how names circulating in public sources reorganized the wider area. It analyzes 35 documented naming events and 54 dated Chinese- and English-language label observations coded by communicative role and referent scale. A name–space relations framework connects the evidence through restorative normalization and heritage compression. The findings show that political renaming in 1966 grouped seven earlier street segments under three shared names, while measures in 1972 and 1981 selectively restored earlier names and spatial distinctions but retained or adjusted other decisions. Names circulating in public sources grouped officially named streets into broader destinations or planning areas without replacing individual names. Huifang thus extends Chinese urban toponymy beyond name survival or restoration to examine whether associated spatial distinctions are preserved, restored, or obscured, and provides a basis for comparison across the Global Easts through substantive toponymic change under institutional continuity.