Character Name - Question for all you Japanese/Chinese speakers out there.

[Calemyr]

This is a silly request, I know.

I've been working on a shadowdancer/assassin for a while and I wanted to name her Xian Miyu. I don't know if that's a realistic name in either culture, but I wanted to be sure it didn't have any meaning in any event - or at least no bad meaning.

[Xuc Xac]

"Xian" could be a legitimate name in Mandarin (in Pinyin Romanization) or Vietnamese (although the meanings and pronunciation would be different). Those are tonal languages. There are dozens of different meanings depending on which tone you use. It's a common misspelling of Xi'an, the name of a city in central China. "Miyu" could mean "riddle" if the tones were right.

[DeadManSleeping]

If it has an "x" in it, it isn't Japanese.

"Miyu" is close to "Miyuki", but you'd not find it as a standalone name in modern Japanese. I admit, I don't know enough about Classical Japanese to completely rule it out, but I've not seen it in any old Japanese literature.

If you want to find legit Japanese names, just find anime/manga that are actually set in Japan. You'll get buttloads. But don't go looking there for Chinese names, because you'll end up naming your character "Shampoo"

[Calemyr]

Thanks a lot, guys. The goal wasn't to make a legitimate name, however. One of the defining characteristics of the character is that she's decidedly foreign to the setting, a stranger in a strange land, which means adopting a naming convention outside the standard for the region. Xian Miyu had a certain something to it that made me keep coming back to it. Some characters just already have a name, you know? You just have to go with it and hope the name doesn't mean something unfortunate.

I like "riddle", though. It fits suits her amusingly well. What could Xian mean in the same language? (In my head, the pronunciation has always been "ZHI-ahn".

[unosarta]

If you are going with a combination of the two, you could have Kageyuki Miyu. "Shadow Snow" in Japanese and "Riddle" in Chinese.

影雪（かげゆき）Kageyuki. 谜语 mí yǔ.

You could alternatively go with traditional characters for miyu and have it be 謎語. Same pronunciation.

The first Xian I could think of off of the top of my head was Xianzai, which means now, and the xian itself is: 現.

That character means current, existing, appear.