#*gmdzs

usually, when a name is three characters, whatever meaning the last name may have is essentially irrelevant to the meaning of the name itself (which derives from the first name only). for instance, lan (蓝) means blue, but the interpretation of lan wangi (蓝忘机) only goes by the first name wangji (忘机), which means to forget worldly matters. 

however, when a name is only two characters, often the meaning of the last name is used in conjunction with the meaning of the first name to form a two-character phrase that has more connotations than if we just look at the single character of the first name. a good deal of emphasis is also placed on homonyms; i.e. if a character sounds like another character, then it may also allude to the meaning of the character it sounds like. i’m going to quickly go through why i chose these meanings for these birth names and indicate whether or not i included the meaning of the last name.

wei ying: by itself, ying (婴) means infant. the last name wei (魏) in wei wuxian’s name doesn’t mean “to feed,” but it sounds exactly like the word for “feed” in chinese (喂). thus, by sound only, wei ying seems to mean “to feed an infant.” thus, the “to feed” part is in the connotation of the name by homonym

lan zhan: the phrase zhan lan (湛蓝), switching around the characters in lan zhan’s name, means azure blue. however, zhan (湛) by itself may mean clear or profound.

lan yuan: the meaning of lan is not incorporated in this name’s meaning. yuan (愿) means wish/desire/hope. note that the yuan in a-yuan/wen yuan (苑) is not the same character as the one in lan yuan, though it is pronounced exactly the same. the original yuan (苑) means garden.

wen qing & wen ning: wen (温) means warm, and warm actually works really well into both wen ning and wen qing’s full names. so, this is included in their names’ meanings.

lan huan: the meaning of lan is not incorporated in this name’s meaning. huan (涣) means to dissipate.