Chinese Names
The Chinese names of various people and dragons are usually presented in alphabetic transliteration.
Chinese is a tonal language, and English spellings often do not convey the tones. Thus, one set of English letters can have many meanings.
In general, traditional Chinese names consist of a single-character family name followed by a personal name, which may consist of one or two characters. Two-character personal names, especially for males, often begin with a generational indicator. Each written character is pronounced as a single syllable.
Contents
Humans
Outside the Imperial family, the Chinese names of humans are often given in a two-part format. It is unclear whether this represents a two-part personal name, or a family name followed by a one-part (or truncated) personal name.
The Imperial family
In the case of the Jiaqing Emperor, "Jiaqing" (嘉慶) is his regnal title. His two-part personal name was Yongyan; in his youth, it was written as 永琰, but upon his ascension to the throne, he changed the first character to the homonym 顒. "Yong" is the indicator for his generation of the family, as can be seen by comparison to the name of his brother Prince Yongxing.
The emperor's sons, Prince Miankai and Prince Mianning, are also referred to by two-part personal names. "Ming" is the indicator for their generation of the family.
Dragons
Chinese dragons usually have a three-part name, although the structure does not exactly mirror that of human names.
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.
Thus, for dragons, the first character is a species indicator, the second character is a breed indicator, and the third is the true personal name.
Breed names
The breed indicator is probably the closest analogue to a human family name, especially for Celestials which truly comprise a small and closely interrelated family.
The Qin character for Imperials is probably 秦, which was the name of the first dynasty of China. Its literal meaning is "ash tree".
The Yu character in the name of Lung Yu Ping, a Jade dragon, is probably 玉, which means "jade".
The Shen character in the name of Shen-Lung "Spiritual Dragons" is probably 神, which represents a general concept of "spirit" or "consciousness".
The name of Lung Li Po is probably based on that of the historical Chinese (human) poet [Li Po]. If so, then the Li (李, "plum") character may not really indicate a particular dragon breed, although it could refer to a small purple dragon breed seen several times in China.
Transliteration issues
In a comment to Novik's 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:
