Chinese Names
Chinese is a tonal language, and English spellings often do not convey the tones. Thus, one set of English letters can have many meanings. The following are some of the more likely meanings for Chinese names, especially those of Celestial and Imperial dragons. It is assumed that Celestials and Imperials would speak Mandarin Chinese.
Xian - 1) immortal; 2) to fly; 3) in advance, first (suitable for a Celestial born of two Imperial parents, who might be expected to sire a line of Celestials)
Xiang - 1) auspicious, propitious; 2) to soar
In a blog post, Naomi Novik provided the following information; she linked to some specific characters but did not include them:
All dragon names have three syllables, beginning with Lung [龍], meaning "dragon". The second syllable denotes the breed; in the case of Celestials, Tien [天], meaning "sky" or "heaven". The third is individual; Temeraire's name is Xiang [祥], meaning auspicious (I am not sure this is the actual character I worked from initially, though -- it seems the closest one I could find on zhongwen.com). Another name used is Chuan [全], meaning perfect. And Mei [美] means beautiful.
In a comment to this post, a reader pointed out that Novik combines two inconsistent transliteration systems, using Temeraire's Chinese name as an example: "Lung Tien Hsiang is how the name would have been romanized in Wade-Giles. Long Tian Xiang is how it would be romanized in Pinyin."
According to other readers elsewhere, Novik oversimplifies the Wade-Giles romanizations in a way that may affect the intended pronunciations.
References
Source for intended meanings: [1] "Temeraire: Feast or Famine; also, a bunch of questions answered"
Source for romanization issues: [2] [3]
Sources for translations:
