Xayah and Rakan in Chinese
Let’s talk about League’s hottest avian couple and their names in Chinese.
Xayah - 霞 (xiá): The character 霞 is used to refer to dusk or dawn, or more precisely, the beautiful orange/pink/purple colors of the sky and the clouds. This translation probably came about as a combination of the sound of Xayah’s name and color of her feathers, though I do wonder if it was decided upon before or after the Cosmic Dawn/Cosmic Dusk launch skins.
Rakan - 洛 (luò): 洛 is the name of a river (洛河, literally Luo River). More famously, there is a city along the bank of said river called 洛阳 (Luoyang), which is what the character 洛 is most closely associated with. The second character in 洛阳 means “sun”, and 洛 is pronounced the same way as 落, which means “to descend”, and so the city’s name as a whole is a homophone for “sunset”. Again, this association with the sun is probably due to the color of Rakan’s feathers, as well as linking him with Xayah and potentially their launch skins.
More interesting, though, are their epithets. Xayah is known as “The Rebel” in English, but her epithet in Chinese is 逆羽, where the first character means “to go against” and the second character means “feathers”. So “rebel feathers”, but also quite literally “ruffled feathers”. Rakan, meanwhile, is “The Charmer” in English, but in Chinese he’s called 幻翎. The first character means illusion or imaginary, while the second refers to the larger and more vibrant feathers at the end of a bird’s wings or tail -- so, still feathers like Xayah, but more showy. As a bit of a showman and a trickster, perhaps a good translation would be “illusory plumage”.