NANCHANG - The city of Nanchang, capital of east China's Jiangxi province, is soliciting names for three newborn South China tigers in order to boost public awareness of the rare species.

Over a thousand submissions were sent in by Thursday, according to Kuang Huaming, a spokesman from the city zoo where the triplets were born.

The triplets, born to a female tiger nicknamed "Xin Xin" in late May, are made up of two females and a single male, Kuang said.

He added that the cubs' names will be chosen in late September in accordance with a Chinese tradition that states that babies should be named exactly 100 days after being born.

The South China tiger is the oldest sub-species of tigers and is also the most endangered, with less than 100 of the animals remaining in the world. All surviving South China tigers have been bred in Chinese zoos.

Kuang said that captive breeding is difficult because of inbreeding, low reproductivity and genetic degeneration.